frameless|right|alt="Clement Hodgkinson, c.1893"Clement Hodgkinson (1818 – 5 September 1893) was an English naturalist, explorer and surveyor of Australia. He was Victorian Assistant Commissioner of Crown Lands and Survey from 1861 to 1874.

Exploration in New South Wales

Qualified as a civil engineer, Hodgkinson left England in 1839 intending to become a pastoralist. After his arrival, he bought into a cattle station near Kempsey on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. A year later, the Government of New South Wales hired Hodgkinson to survey and explore the northeastern areas of New South Wales as far as Moreton Bay. In March 1841 he explored the upper reaches of the Nambucca and Bellinger rivers, becoming in the process the first European to make contact with the local Aborigines there. He then followed the Macleay, Clarence, Hastings, Richmond and Tweed river valleys, visiting Port Macquarie, Brisbane and Moreton Bay. After returning to England, he published an account of his explorations, Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay, in 1845. In it he included observations about the Aboriginal tribal life he had witnessed and the natural history of the areas he had explored.

Landscape design of Melbourne's gardens

In the 1850s he again journeyed from England to the young colony of Victoria. In 1854 his wife, Amelia Diana Hunt, gave birth to a son. A year later his first wife had died at the age of 26. In 1857 he married Anne Smart and they subsequently had several children.

In 1852, Hodgkinson joined the Survey Office as a draftsman and was appointed as District Surveyor for Victoria in 1855.

Hodgkinson was Vice-President of the Philosophical Institute of Victoria in 1856 and again in 1858, and Council Member of the Royal Society of Victoria in 1859-1860.

Hodgkinson was a member of the Royal Society's Exploration Committee which organised the Burke and Wills expedition.

Works

  • <!-- Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay -->

Tributes

Hodgkinsonia ovatiflora, commonly referred to as Hodgkinsonia or Golden ash was named after Clement Hodgkinson. The species is found from the Hastings River, NSW to Mackay, Queensland. It grows in Subtropical, dry and littoral rainforest, and also open forest.

In 1858, John Hardy named Olinda creek after Alice Olinda Hodgkinson, the daughter of Clement Hodgkinson. Subsequently the suburb of Olinda was named after the creek.

References

  • Explorer and surveyor, Clement Hodgkinson, 1818 - 1893
  • Hodgkinsonia ovatiflora
  • Burke and Wills Web; RSV Exploration Committee
  • H. W. Nunn, 'Hodgkinson, Clement (1818 - 1893)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 4, MUP, 1972, pp 403–404