What is clear from the diary is the extent to which Colin and Isabella's large family, no doubt something of a burden when the children were small and had to be dragged around Victoria, now became a major asset.  For although there was some hired help - including groups of Maori people who came to live on the station at shearing time - the great bulk of the work was done by family labour.  But despite all their great efforts, 'Lochinver' does not appear to have been the success for which they had hoped. International wool prices had declined steadily for more than a decade, so that by 1886 they were about a third less than at the peak in 1873, and it must have been a struggle to cope in an inland area like Taupo with its additional transport costs.  Consequently, in 1887 the Munros moved to another sheep station which Colin acquired in the Hawkes Bay area, leaving 'Lochinver' in the hands of Daniel and Catherine (Kitty) MacDonald.  The new property was in the Wairoa district, closer to the seaboard, and the family named it 'Riverina' after a region in Victoria.

While Colin and Isabella were busy in Australia and New Zealand, raising a family and getting a foot on the first

rungs of a property ladder that would have been closed to them in Scotland, there was apparently little or no communication between Colin and his family back home in Scotland. Admittedly, there are a couple of references in the 'Lochinver' diary to receipt of 'home mails' but its is not clear if 'home' refers to Scotland or, more likely, Victoria.  The lack of a correspondence between Colin and his brothers would not be surprising - all three had grown up at a time when, despite the much-vaunted system of Scottish parish schools, half of the men in Ross-shire were illiterate.  Sandy certainly could not read or write, and the Ida's passenger list makes it clear that neither Colin nor Isabella were literate when they landed in Australia.  Consequently, one of the normal links in the chain of emigration from Scotland - when early migrants wrote home to extol the virtues of their new country and to encourage family and friends to join them - did not work in the case of the Munros. Neither Roderick nor Sandy followed in Colin's footsteps, and Colin's children apparently grew up with little knowledge of, or contact with the Munros in Scotland. They had turned their backs on Glen Orrin to exploit to the full the opportunities of their new land.