Joseph Hawdon

Joseph Hawdon (14 November 1813 – 12 April 1871) was a pioneer settler and overlander of Australia, and pioneer and politician of New Zealand.

Hawdon was born at Wackerfield, Durham, England, the son of John Hawdon. At the suggestion of his elder brother John, who had arrived in Sydney in 1828, he decided to travel to Australia, arriving at Sydney in November 1834.

In 1836 Hawdon together with John Gardiner and John Hepburn made an overland journey to Melbourne with cattle, the first to come from New South Wales. Hawdon returned briefly to Sydney, but then in 1837 he moved to Melbourne and in August took up land near the present site of Dandenong.

About the end of that year the newly established South Australian settlement was threatened with famine. Sensing a commercial opportunity, Hawdon returned to New South Wales where, along with Charles Bonney and Charles Campbell, he put together an expedition to drove 300 head of cattle from the Goulburn district to Adelaide, where they arrived on 3 April 1838. Following the course of the Murray River, along the route they discovered two fine lakes - Lake Victoria and Lake Bonney. Hawdon named the first after Queen Victoria and the second after Bonney. Charles Sturt in an official report made in August 1838 said of this journey: "Messrs Hawdon and Bonney could not have taken a more direct line or shortened the journey more wisely". Having beaten other aspiring overlanders, including John Hill and Edward John Eyre. Hawdon and Lieutenant Mundy left Melbourne on an expedition to Adelaide on 11 July 1839, travelled NNW to Expedition Pass, near present-day Castlemaine, and stopped at various squatter stations. They reached the Henty's station near Casterton on 25 July, camped at Lake Mundy (a freshwater lake which Holloway named after Hawdon's companion) on 27 July, followed the tracks of the Holloway party which they caught on 2 August and proceeded close to the coast through The Coorong, crossed the Murray on 8 August and arrived in Adelaide on 11 August.

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