Howitt was born on 17 April 1830, in
Nottingham, England, the son of authors
William Howitt and
Mary Botham. He went to the
Victorian gold fields in 1852 with his father and brother to visit his uncle,
Godfrey Howitt. Initially, Howitt was a geologist in
Victoria; later, he worked as a gold warden in North
Gippsland. Howitt went on to be appointed Police magistrate & Warden Crown Lands Commissioner; later still, he held the position of Secretary of the Mines Department. In 1861, the
Royal Society of Victoria appointed Howitt leader of the Victorian Relief Expedition, with the task of establishing the fate of the
Burke and Wills expedition. Howitt was a skilled bushman; he took only the necessary equipment and a small crew on the journey to
Cooper Creek. There, on 16 September he found sole survivor
John King; Howitt buried
Burke and
Wills before returning to
Melbourne with King. On a follow-up expedition to Cooper Creek in 1862, Howitt recovered the bodies of Burke and Wills A memorial fund established after his death was used to buy rare books on topics such as anthropology, geology, and botany for the library of the Royal Society; these books were inscribed
"Purchased from A. W. Howitt Memorial Fund". He was appointed CMG in the
1906 Birthday Honours. Howitt died on 7 March 1908, aged 77, in
Bairnsdale. The recreational park named in his honour is located adjacent to the Mitchell River Bridge on the eastern side of Bairnsdale. Howitt's scientific life shared a special irony with that of his longtime friend
Lorimer Fison. They were both set in motion by
Lewis Henry Morgan; Morgan pinned more hope on Fison than on Howitt. However, Fison gave up his scientific pursuit shortly after Morgan's death, whereas Howitt persevered for many years. Howitt's magnum opus,
The Native Tribes of South East Australia (1904), remains one of the only contemporaneous scientific studies of the native institutions of Central Australian Aborigines. ==Recognition==