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Escaped or freed convicts came to New Zealand from Australia in sufficient numbers to ‘render somewhat false the commonly held New Zealand conceit about purer origins’. The Sydney Herald estimated in 1837 that there were between 200 and 300 former convicts in New Zealand. Deserting sailors and ruffians also arrived, eager to escape the law. As late as 1849, the labouring population in Lyttelton was said to include escaped prisoners and convicts.
One of the first women to settle was Charlotte Badger, an English convict who lived at the Bay of Islands between about 1806 and 1808. She reached New Zealand after convicts seized a vessel on the Tasmanian coast; she was reported to have participated in the capture. Thomas Birch, an English labourer transported to Sydney in 1819, settled in New Zealand in 1827 after being freed.
Source: John Wilson, 'Australians - Early arrivals', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/australians/page-2 (accessed 5 February 2022)