William Aplin (27 April 1840 – 18 February 1901) was an Australian pioneer, businessman and politician of Queensland, Australia in the 19th century.

He obtained a position as a sales representative for merchants Seaward, Marsh & Company, at Port Denison, Bowen, Queensland in 1863, on the wild northern frontier of settlement.

William Aplin saw opportunity in a development further north and formed a partnership Clifton & Aplin with William Clifton, the shipping agent for the Australasian Steam Navigation Company shipping agent at Port Denison, to establish a mercantile supply and commission agency business in the new settlement of Townsville on the Ross River and Cleveland Bay, Queensland.

The Aplin brothers conducted the hands-on agency dealings and sales of goods, whilst Clifton who was more courtly, managed the financial business.

Branch offices were opened in Normanton in 1871, Cairns in 1876, Burketown in 1879, Brisbane, Cooktown, Rockhampton and Thursday Island in the Torres Strait.

The Company began to specialise in mining and industrial machinery and acquired a wharf at the port in Brisbane for imports from America in 1881.

Also a new Company office was opened in Darwin, Northern Territory, by Edward Wareham in 1887, and he was promoted to shipping manager at Townsville in 1888, as William Aplin focussed on politics.

The Company's buildings and stock in Darwin were totally destroyed in a terrible cyclone that devastated the town, sunk the pearling fleet in the harbour on 7 January 1897 and cause 28 deaths.

In 1881 at 41 years of age William Aplin returned to his rural roots and purchased the huge Southwick pastoral station of 270,000 acres (110,000 ha).

After the first 20 cattle were drafted off and steadied, the work proceeded more rapidly but sometimes a rogue (known colloquially as a gunner) bullock would charge and bore in on the stockhorse, sending horse and rider crashing to the ground.

Also Harry Aplin accompanied some good horses on Company ships to Madras (now Chennai), India, where he sold them direct to the British Army.

He was a friend of explorer and pastoralist William Hann of Maryvale pastoral station near Charters Towers and travelled with him to attend the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London in 1886.

Around that time Aplin's interests increasingly turned to business in Townsville and politics in Brisbane and he was seldom at home on the range.

[5] He was well regarded on the Etheridge goldfield, where in 1875 the miners at the Royal Hotel in Georgetown petitioned him to stand for election as Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly for the Burke District, but he declined saying that his business engagements required the whole of his attention.

William Aplin was appointed at 40 years of ae to the Queensland Legislative Council at Brisbane on 19 Oct 1880 and served as a parliamentarian for the rest of his life.

He built a home called Edgecliff Townhouse in Cleveland Terrace, Melton Hill, Townsville but it was soon destroyed in the cyclone of 1867 and he rebuilt it.

However whilst away for periods on business or at Parliament in Brisbane, he conducted an affair with the young daughter of businessman and parliamentarian James Campbell.

After being widowed at 55 years, he married his mistress, Isabella Annie Campbell (1862-1927) at her family's Camona mansion in Kelvin Grove, Brisbane in 1897.

He was a crack shot and was recorded at 57 years competing in the Queensland Rifle Association medal over 500 yards (460 m) at Brisbane, where he came second after a 3-way shoot-off.

His funeral was a big social occasion attended by Brisbane high society including: brother-in-law & Premier of Queensland and founder of Burns Philp & Co, Sir Robert Philp; father-in-law & businessman, James Campbell; brother-in law & businessman & politician, John Dunmore Campbell; brother in law & businessman, Charles William Campbell; brother-in-law & businessman & politician, James Forsyth; grazier & past Premier of Queensland, Sir Hugh Nelson; politician & past Wesleyan minister, Fred Brentnall; grazier & politician, William Allan; grazier & politician, Albert Norton; businessman & politician, John Archibald; Minister for Public Works & businessman, John Leahy; businessman & past Minister for Lands, Sir Alfred Cowley; grazier and politician, John Cameron (see Aus Dict Biog); past Police Commissioner David Seymour (see Aus Dict Biog); Railways Commissioner Robert Gray; Manager of Adelaide Steamship Company & his former employee, Edward Wareham; and other financial, mercantile and pastoral businessmen, but by only one blood member of his family, Wil Aplin.

His will and estate was disputed with legal action dragging on for many years, whilst the severe Federation drought intensified, leading to the disastrous loss of 7,000 head of cattle on Southwick in 1902.