Freeling enlisted in the
Royal Engineers and later served under the South Australian Government as Surveyor-General. In this capacity he did some valuable exploring work in
South Australia. He also served as a member of the Executive and
Legislative Councils prior to the concession of responsible government. In March 1857, Freeling was elected to the newly constituted Legislative Council, where he sat until his resignation in August 1859. He was a member of the
Finniss Ministry of South Australia as Commissioner of Public Works from October 1856 to March 1857, when he retired rather than relinquish the permanent post of Surveyor-General. In 1861, he retired as Surveyor-General and moved back to England. There, he served as a lieutenant-colonel and a major-general in the Royal Engineers before retiring. In 1871, he became the 5th
Baronet of Ford and Hutchings, Sussex. In 1860, the
Victorian government
botanist,
Ferdinand von Mueller named a newly discovered flowering plant
Eremophila freelingii in his honour. The
type specimen of the
species had been collected by
George Charles Hawker on Freeling's expedition to
Lake Torrens in South Australia. ==Death==