Australian Politician. He is recognized as an editor, union leader and "first Labor premier in the world." More commonly known as Andrew, he was born in Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia. After both of his parents dying shortly after his birth, he was placed in an orphanage until he was 9 years old, when he moved to Gympie to live with his uncle and attended formal schooling until age 12. He began work as a miner in Charters Towers, becoming the president of the Miners Union there. In the mid-1880s he followed the Gold Rush to Western Australia, but did not find his fortune, therefore returning to mining. On December 21, 1887 he married the widow Caroline Ryan, née Quinn and the couple had two daughters and two sons. He started a career in journalism and became editor of the "The Charters Towers Eagle." With current political issues in the air such as Irish home rule, sending a military contingent to the Boer War in Africa, and women's right to vote, he entered state politics in 1893 and won the seat of Charters Towers for the Labor Party, which he successfully held in the 1896 and 1899 state elections. In 1899 he formed a ministry and became Premier of Queensland when the government led by James Dickson resigned. However, his ministry only lasted a week when it was defeated in the state house. In 1901 he moved to federal politics, being elected as a Senator for Queensland in Australia's first parliament. In 1904 he was appointed to the post of Minister for Defense in the first federal Labor Government. As an Australian Bushie, he stood up to the aristocratic British chief of Australia's armed forces, Major-General Hutton, on the subject of reorganizing the Department of Defense; Dawson won and Hutton returned to England. He lost his seat at the 1906 federal election when he stood as an Independent after a disagreement with the Labor Party. At that point, he retired from politics with declining health, but he returned to Brisbane to take part in the 1910 federal elections, becoming seriously ill and was hospitalized. Printed in the "Northern Miner" in 1910, "…he would certainly have been Prime Minister of the Commonwealth today. Dawson's principal drawback was undoubtedly his problem with alcohol." This was said to be his cause of death.