Robert Hoddle

Robert Hoddle
Robert Hoddle, oil painting by his daughter Agnes McDonald circa 1888
Born	Robert Hoddle (1794-04-20)April 20, 1794 Westminster, London, England
Died	October 24, 1881(1881-10-24) (aged 87) Melbourne, Australia
Occupation	Surveyor
Spouse(s)	1st Wife: Mary Staton (b.? - d. October 1862) (married: November 1818) 2nd wife:Fanny Agnes Baxter(b. circa 1842 - d. ?) (married:July 1863)
Children	from 1st wife: Sarah Elizabeth Hoddle (b. ? - d. 1841) from 2nd wife: Agnes Hoddle (b. 4th June, 1867 - d. ?) Fanny Hoddle (b. c 1866 - d. ?) Robert Hoddle (b. c 1872 - d. ?)

Robert Hoddle (20 April 1794 – 24 October 1881) was a surveyor of Port Phillip District (later known as the Australian state of Victoria) in the 1830s, and the creator of the Hoddle Grid, the street grid system upon which inner city Melbourne is based. He was also an accomplished artist and depicted scenes of the Port Phillip region as well as New South Wales. Hoddle was one of the earliest-known European artists to capture images of Ginninderra, an area now occupied by Canberra, Australia's National Capital.

Hoddle, the son of a bank clerk for the Bank of England, was born in Westminster, London. He became a cadet-surveyor in the British army in 1812. Hoddle worked in the Ordnance Department and took part in the trigonometrical survey of Great Britain. Hoddle then sailed for the Cape Colony, South Africa in 1822 where he worked on military surveys.

Hoddle migrated to the Australian colonies, arriving in Sydney, New South Wales, aboard the William Penn in July 1823.Governor Brisbane appointed him assistant surveyor under Surveyor-General John Oxley. Hoddle spent the next twelve years in Queensland and later still in New South Wales where he surveyed the sites for the towns of Berrima and Goulburn as well as Bell's Line of Road in the Blue Mountains. Between 1830 and 1836, Hoddle made several visits to the rural district now occupied by the Australian Capital Territory (A.C.T.), where he surveyed property boundaries. Squatters were urgently pressing for government surveyors to legalise their rural holdings. Hoddle’s field book indexes the history of the aforementioned areas and pastoralists— George Palmer, Robert Campbell and Hamilton Hume.