| Sir William Austin Zeal1830-1912
President: 1892-1901 Legislative Assembly: 1864-1865, 1871-1874 Legislative Council: 1882-1901
Zeal worked on railway construction for approximately ten years. In late 1864 he was elected to the Legislative Assembly for Castlemaine and retained the seat for just one year. Between 1866 and 1870 he partnered William Mitchell who was to become President of the Legislative Council in 1870, in pastoral runs in the Riverina, and in 1871 he was again elected to the Legislative Assembly for Castlemaine, this time holding the seat until 1874. He was also a Prahran city councillor and a chairman of many companies. In 1882 Zeal returned to Parliament, this time elected to the Legislative Council in a by-election for North Western Province. He remained a member of the Legislative Council until 1901, serving as Postmaster-General in 1892 and President from 1892 until 1901. He was knighted in 1895. Zeal was a delegate to the Federal Convention and on his resignation from the Legislative Council was elected to the Senate in the first Commonwealth Parliament. He retired from political life in 1906, and died six years later in Toorak. He was unmarried. |
Like his predecessor, William Zeal was a member of the Legislative Assembly
before he was elected to the Legislative Council. He was born in England, trained as a
surveyor and engineer, and arrived in Melbourne in 1852. He went briefly to the
Castlemaine goldfields before he found work as a railway engineer in 1855.