In his youth he worked as a carpenter and entered formal study in his early twenties at the Art Department of the Perth Tech College.

Hitchcock later moved away from this early realism (which he sought to create in his sculptures) to a "more stylized and abstract search of forms and planes".

His first commission came in 1970 of the champion race horse Aquanita, which competed in the Melbourne Cup in the early 1960s, and was a quarter life size.

Towards the end of the 1970s Hitchcock bronzes took on a larger scale, which was particularly suited for public art commissions – the most significant of which is, almost certainly, his sculpture of Yagan.

Their requests were refused, however, after the Premier, Charles Court was advised by one prominent historian that Yagan was not important enough to warrant a statue.

[2] The Noongar community then established a Yagan Committee and eventually raised sufficient funds to commission Hitchcock to create a statue.