Harold Heneage Finch-Hatton (23 August 1856 – 16 May 1904) was a British politician and Australian federationist.
Early life
Finch-Hatton was born in Eastwell Park, Kent, England, the fourth son of George Finch-Hatton, 10th Earl of Winchilsea and his wife Fanny Margaretta, daughter of Edward Royd Rice of Dane Court, Kent. He was educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, and at 19 years of age went to Queensland to visit his brother Henry Finch-Hatton. He took up land in the Mackay district and later worked on the Nebo goldfields. Returning to England in 1883 he published in 1885 an account of his travels Advance Australia! (2nd ed. 1886).
“Advance Australia!” publication
According to The Times in 1904 this book was written in an entertaining way, but his statements about the Aborigines and his views on Australian politicians must be accepted with caution. Finch-Hatton's written recollections of his eight years around the Mackay area of Queensland is an account of British colonial life in the Antipodes.
Voyage from Singapore to Keppel Bay
Finch-Hatton travelled aboard the Somerset which along the way, somewhere in the Indonesian archipelago, “ran down a native boat and drowned everyone in it.” They anchored off the pearling station of Somerset on Cape York where “black divers..go down and bring up the mother-of-pearl shells,” and a couple of white men have taken residence purely “to enjoy the society of black women.” Finch-Hatton writes that the Government Resident was waging an endless war against the local aboriginal clans. He eventually arrived in Keppel Bay off Rockhampton and then made his way to his brother's station near Mackay.
