He found the Payneham Boys' Field Club in 1887 and advocated reform in educational policies in South Australia.
In 1891, he published Teaching in Three Continents, the result of two years' study of education in North America, Great Britain and Europe.
In 1887 and 1890 he had contested elections for the South Australian Parliament; in 1903, he stood for the Senate as an independent without success.
He and Charles Harper together developed the first wheat varieties to be grown exclusively in Western Australia.
He retired from public life in 1928 and died at East Guildford in 1930 of diabetes and gangrene.