William Noah Hedges was an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n politician. Born in Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...

 in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, he received a primary education before his migration to Australia in 1878, where he became a public works contractor. He moved to Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

 in 1893, where he became a company director. In 1906, he was elected to the Australian House of Representatives

Australian House of Representatives

The House of Representatives is one of the two houses of the Parliament of Australia; it is the lower house; the upper house is the Senate. Members of Parliament serve for terms of approximately three years....

 as the member for Fremantle

Division of Fremantle

The Division of Fremantle is an Australian Electoral Division in Western Australia.The division was created at Federation in 1900 and was one of the original 75 divisions contested at the first federal election...

, representing the Western Australian Party

Western Australian Party

The Western Australian Party was a short-lived Australian political party that operated in 1906. It was intended as a liberal party to protect the rights of Western Australians and to oppose the increasingly successful Labour Party, and drew its supporters from the Protectionist Party and the...

 as its only representative (John Forrest

John Forrest

Sir John Forrest GCMG was an Australian explorer, the first Premier of Western Australia and a cabinet minister in Australia's first federal parliament....

 was nominally the leader but in practice did not involve himself in the party). Hedges sat effectively as an independent

Independent (politician)

In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do...

 until 1909, when he joined the newly formed Commonwealth Liberal Party

Commonwealth Liberal Party

The Commonwealth Liberal Party was a political movement active in Australia from 1909 to 1916, shortly after federation....

. He held the seat until his defeat in 1913. In 1929, he was appointed President of the Western Australian Employers Federation; he remained in this position until his death in 1935.