[2] A year after he was born, his family moved to the Logan district of Queensland to take shares in Mundoolun, a property that a friend of his father had taken up.

Collins turned to politics and in 1896, standing as an independent[1] in the seat of Albert, he defeated the sitting member, Thomas Plunkett Sr. by a narrow margin.

[4] In June 1913, Premier Digby Denham[5] appointed Collins to the Legislative Council but he served only two months before his death in August of that year.

From the 1880s onwards, he fought for the preservation of the McPherson Range, and was a founder of the Queensland system of National Parks, convincing the state government to bring in to legislation laws to protect them.

[6] A sign of his importance and the respect he held with the public was that a special train was engaged to take the hundreds of mourners from Brisbane to his funeral, returning home late that evening.