William Hodgkinson
| William Hodgkinson | |
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| Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly for Burke |
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In office 4 December 1873 – 14 September 1875 |
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| Preceded by | New seat |
| Succeeded by | James Parker |
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In office 19 May 1888 – 13 May 1893 Serving with Ernest Hunter, John Hoolan |
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| Preceded by | New seat |
| Succeeded by | Seat abolished |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
William Oswald Hodgkinson 31 March 1835 Handsworth, Warwick, England |
| Died | 23 July 1900 (aged 65) Brisbane, Queensland, Australia |
| Resting place | Toowong Cemetery |
| Nationality | English |
| Spouse(s) | Kate Robertson (m.1862 d.?) |
| Occupation | Explorer, Newspaper editor, Gold miner |
William Oswald Hodgkinson (1835–1900) was an Australian explorer, journalist, gold miner, and politician.
William Oswald Hodgkinson was born on 31 March 1835 in Handsworth, Warwick, England. His father, also named William Oswald Hodgkinson, was a civil engineer and his mother was Harriet Hodgkinson, née Brown.
Hodgkinson was educated at Birmingham Grammar School and by 1851 was a midshipman in the merchant marine. He soon emigrated to Australia, working for the government in Victoria on the Tarnagulla and Forest Creek goldfields. After a short-lived return to England he went to work as a journalist in Australia, starting in 1859, and in 1860 joined the Burke and Wills expedition. Hodgkinson left the expedition before it ended in disaster at Cooper Creek, and went on to join first Alfred William Howitt’s Victorian Relief Expedition, which aimed to establish the fate of the Burke and Wills expedition, and then in 1861 the John McKinlay relief party, on which he served as second-in-command.
Hodgkinson next continued his journalistic career, working as editor for Rockhampton's Morning Bulletin before founding Mackay's first newspaper, the Daily Mercury, in 1866. Returning to the gold mining business in 1868, he worked in the Ravensfield and Cape goldfields for the next two years. In 1870, at the Etheridge goldfield, he became a mining warden and police magistrate, two posts that propelled him onto the Legislative Assembly of Queensland representing the electoral district of Burke in 1874. In 1875, he resigned his seat in order to head up a government expedition that was to report on the potential of some unexplored land mining, pastoral, and agricultural purposes.
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