Design and Art Australia Online

painter and/or sketcher, journalist and mining surveyor, came to South Australia in the early 1850s and was employed as a government escort trooper. By 1853 he was at Ballarat, working at Hilfling & Greig’s store but not enjoying it much. On his way to apply at the labour office on Bakery Hill for a job as a stock-rider, he recollected in a lecture he gave at a Working Man’s Temperance Meeting on 19 February 1870, he was arrested for having no miner’s licence, although 'Worse luck to me I never was a digger, even when gold could be got by pounds weight’. He later became a reporter on the Ballarat Times and subsequently a mining surveyor. In 1855 he drew Lydiard Street North, Ballarat (BFAG), and he is probably the W. Benson credited with the design of a Primitive Methodist brick church in Burnbank Street, built in 1864.

He may have visited Western Australia in about 1868. Several paintings signed 'W.B. Benson’ are known, including Landscape – out of Balingup (c.1868, oil, National Trust WA) and View of the Vasse (n.d., w/c, pen-and-ink, AGWA). An attributed view of Lockeville, near Busselton, shows a member of the Locke family, a governess’s cart and some racehorses in front of the homestead (n.d., oil, p.c.). It is possible, however, that the Western Australian views were by the Quaker William Benson . If by the Ballarat Benson, he was back there by 1870 to deliver his lecture. He died at Ballarat in 1882.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011