Early Life
Clarke was the eldest son of William John Turner Clarke M.L.C. and his wife Eliza, née Dowling and was born in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania). Clarke senior was an early Tasmanian colonist, who acquired large pastoral properties in Tasmania, Victoria South Australia and New Zealand and settled afterwards in Victoria at Rupertswood, Sunbury.
W.J. Clarke first arrived in Victoria in 1850, when he spent a couple of years in the study of sheep farming on his father's Dowling Forest station, and afterwards in the management of the Woodlands station on the Wimmera. For the next ten years he resided in Tasmania, working the Norton-Mandeville estate in conjunction with his brother, Joseph Clarke. In 1862 he assumed the management of his father's concerns in Victoria, and on the latter's death in 1874 succeeded to his estates in that colony.
Read more about this topic: William John Clarke
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