The Wards lived in Dunedin for only two years before moving to Hokitika for a year in 1870, then on the eastern coast of the South Island, living in Timaru where they lived in a large mansion 'Eversley' on Belfield Hill on North Street.[1]:151 The economic problems of the 1880s impacts the Judge's health in the early part of the decade, and he took Anne with him to spend a year at the Hot Springs at Waiwera, north of Auckland. By this point, the Judge had begun his love affair with the writer Frances Ellen "Thorpe" Talbot (1850–1923) and had bought a house for her in Dunedin.[1]:120