Qualified as a civil engineer, Hodgkinson left England in 1839 intending to become a pastoralist. After his arrival, he bought into a cattle station near Kempsey, north of Sydney. A year later, the New South Wales colonial government hired Hodgkinson to survey and explore the northeastern areas of New South Wales as far as Moreton Bay. In March 1841 he explored the upper reaches of the Nambucca and Bellinger rivers, becoming in the process the first European to make contact with the local Aborigines there. He then followed the Macleay, Clarence, Hastings, Richmond and Tweed river valleys, visiting Port Macquarie, Brisbane and Moreton Bay. After returning to England, he published an account of his explorations, "Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay", in 1845. In it he included observations about the Aboriginal tribal life he had witnessed and the natural history of the areas he had explored, such as this description of rainforest: