In 1886, he emigrated to Victoria, Australia, where he found work in locomotive construction at the Phoenix Foundry in Ballarat.

He became a member of the Fremantle Trades Hall Association, and president of the Transcontinental Railway League.

In December 1903, he was elected to the Australian House of Representatives seat of Fremantle as a Labor candidate.

[3] After his defeat he moved into a secretarial and agency business, and was also a journalist, working as editor of the briefly-reestablished Fremantle Herald.

[citation needed] On 11 September 1930, his dead body was found floating in the Hacking River at Sutherland, New South Wales.