On 11 July 1881 at the Elizabeth Street registry office, Sydney, he married Fanny Skillman (d.1897), daughter of the headteacher at Ulladulla.

Cambage's evidence to the royal commission on the disaster led to the reversal of the coroner's verdict that the miners had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Front 1909 to 1915 he lectured on surveying at Sydney Technical College, was on three occasions elected president of the Institution of Surveyors, and was for 15 years a member of its board of examiners.

He was honorary secretary of the Australian National Research Council from its inception in 1919 until 1926, and organised the second pan-Pacific science congress held in Melbourne and Sydney in 1923.

As a member of the Royal Australian Historical Society his knowledge of surveying and bushcraft enabled him to throw light on the journeys of some of the early explorers.