By the time of his birth, his father was on the verge of becoming a prosperous manufacturer, being a half owner, with his elder brother George, of the company G & C Hoskins.

[30] When Charles Hoskins retired in 1924, the plan for a new works at Port Kembla was in place, but there was some deliberate ambiguity about the future of the existing steelworks at Lithgow.

Hoskins had learnt what he knew of steel production from his time at the relatively antiquated Lithgow works and from trips that he made overseas to visit more modern plants.

Cecil Hoskins would be responsible for the construction and commissioning of the new plant at Port Kembla, while his brother Sid would run the operations at Lithgow, as these gradually wound down.

[37] No sooner than all seemed well with the furnace, in early September 1928, a tap hole blew out unleashing a flood of molten iron, which left injury and destruction in its path.

The railway line from Moss Vale to Unanderra opened in 1932 allowing limestone and dolomite for the blast furnace to be brought more easily from Marulan and Mount Fairy.

Baldwins received their shares as a part payment for disused rolling mill equipment to be removed from their Margam works and reinstalled at Port Kembla.

[70] Although the Hoskins had endowed Lithgow with some fine buildings, the impact of the closure the steelworks led to some long-term resentment of the family, from those residents who remained.

The stark and desolate ruin of the blast furnaces' blower house still stands as a reminder of demise of the town's main industry.

Correspondingly, although there had been some earlier industrial development there, the arrival of the steelworks at Port Kembla—with the migration of employees from Lithgow and, to a lesser extent, Sydney—resulted in the population of Wollongong doubling in the ten years to 1936.

Learning from the ad-hoc layout of the old Lithgow plant, the new steelworks was laid out in a logical plan, with minimal transport required between stages in the production process.

Hoskins' lack of technical knowledge and experience in production —at least in a modern plant—contrasted with Lewis, a qualified mining engineer, who was across the detail of his operation and had proven himself at Newcastle.

[83] In April, Hoskins was extolling the virtues of the new sheet mill and galvanising plant which was then being erected, while simultaneously defending the 'deferral' of dividends on preference shares.

It appears that pressure for results and interference in the new mill's operation, from the directors, Hoskins included, complicated the on-going teething troubles.

[104] The company managed to pay the 7.5% dividend owing to its preference shareholders in 1928, 1929 and 1930, but could not maintain these payments, as its profits dived,[105] coinciding with the most critical phase of the establishing of its steelmaking operation at Port Kembla.

[84] Finally, in April 1935, Hoskins announced that the company would pay a distribution on its preference shares; the one that had been due for the half year to the end of May 1931.

Nonetheless, in the 1933-1934 financial year, the company called up £150,000 from the holders of its partly-paid ordinary shares,[105] which it needed to fund its new sheet mill, among other things.

[105] Hoskins was not candid with the public, or his shareholders, about the troubles at the sheet mill,[108][111] the actual profit outlook,[112] or about the other difficulties the company faced.

Rumours that a merger was in train began circulating in August 1935, but initially were deflected, without comment, by both Hoskins and Harold Darling of BHP.

[117] Probably that was a rationalisation of a more uncomfortable truth; ultimately, albeit after much time and great effort, the grand plans for Australian Iron & Steel—the vision of Charles Hoskins—had ended in failure.

Then from August 1949 to June 1950, he was on an extended overseas business trip, visiting United States, Canada, England and the Continent, "where he inspected most of the major steelmaking plants to investigate latest methods of manufacture".

He was also a chairman of the Institute of Public Affairs (New South Wales), in which role he could exert financial leverage, by means of fund raising, over the NSW UAP organisation.

Hoskins also involved Sorensen in other landscape garden projects, including the gardens at Berrima Cement Works, Mt Kiera Scout Camp, the planting of a section of the Remembrance Drive (Old Hume Highway) near Berrima, the executive accommodation houses 'Green Hills' and 'Hillside', and his brother Sid's house, Gleniffer Brae.

[218][219] His wife Dorothy died in 1982; she and her sister Madge both lived long enough to attend the fiftieth anniversary of the Hoskins Memorial Church at Lithgow.

[154] His main legacy was the relocation of the steel industry from Lithgow, to Port Kembla, where in due course it was to thrive, albeit by then no longer under Hoskins family control.

Port Kembla both outgrew and outlived its rival plant at Newcastle and, now owned by BlueScope, is still the largest steel producer in Australia.

Hoskins' company was also the first to attempt to exploit the iron ore resources of Western Australia, which have since become the basis of an immense export industry.

The book was compiled with much input from a manager at Port Kembla, Augustus 'Gus' Parish (1912–1967), and Hoskins' long-term secretary, Bessie Foskett.

His son Donald's book, The Ironmaster, presents a franker view of Hoskin's time and the family's involvement in the steel industry.

The old Hoskins 36-inch mill at Port Kembla continued working into the early 1980s—still with one of its stands being driven by a massive Galloway steam engine—until rail and structural steel production were consolidated, at the Whyalla Steelworks in South Australia.