| 1823 | Born at Parramatta, New South Wales, 29 June |
| 1824 | Arrives Kerikeri with parents, aged eight months |
| 1830 | Travels to Sydney with William Yate |
| 1832 | Sent to Hobart for schooling; lives with Hopkins family |
| 1837 | Returns to Waimate North; studies classics and te reo under William Williams |
| 1839 | Travels to Poverty Bay and Waiapu with Williams |
| 1841 | Joins Protectorate civil service, Probationary Clerk |
| 1842 | Interpreter at the trial of Maketu — first Supreme Court criminal sitting in NZ |
| 1842 | Appointed sub-protector, Wellington |
| 1844 | With NZ Company surveying party to Otago; prepares Dunedin land deed |
| 1845 | Interprets for Governor Grey during Hone Heke war |
| 1846 | Resigns civil service; sails to England |
| 1851 | Ordained at Union Chapel, Islington |
| 1851 | Returns to Hobart; minister, Congregational Chapel, Davey Street |
| 1853 | Marries Martha Hopkins in Hobart, 16 January |
| 1870s | Leading voice for secular public education in Tasmania |
| 1878 | Joins Tasmanian Council of Education |
| 1880–81 | President and chief examiner, Council of Education |
| 1890 | Helps establish University of Tasmania; becomes first Vice-Chancellor |
| 1898–1907 | Chancellor, University of Tasmania |
| 1903 | Publishes Notes on Early Life in New Zealand |
| 1913 | Dies at Hobart, 10 March, aged 90 |
George Clarke Junior was born at Parramatta on 29 June 1823 while his parents were still waiting for passage to New Zealand. He arrived at Kerikeri as an infant in 1824 and grew up at the heart of the world his parents were building — surrounded by te reo Māori, the rhythms of mission life, and the company of Ngāpuhi rangatira who visited and worked alongside the Clarke household.
His education was extraordinary for the time and place. As a small boy of six or seven he travelled to Sydney with the missionary William Yate, staying with Samuel Marsden and others for six months. In 1832 Yate took him again, this time south to Hobart, where he was placed with the Hopkins family — Henry Hopkins, a Congregational merchant — and attended Robt. Giblin's Academy at Newtown. The arrangement came about through the deep friendship between Martha Clarke and Mrs Hopkins, who 'could not bear the thought of her friend's child being brought up through all his boyhood with no better surroundings than those of early missionary life.' George Junior spent four years in Hobart, returning to Waimate North in 1837, nearly fourteen years old.
Back at Waimate, he continued his education under William Williams — later Bishop of Waiapu — immersing himself in Greek, Latin, and te reo Māori. He accompanied Williams to Poverty Bay in 1839, travelling among Māori communities, deepening his understanding of language and tikanga. He was still at Tūranga when Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed in 1840.
The interpreter
When his father became Chief Protector in 1840, George Junior joined the Protectorate's civil service as a probationary clerk. He was nineteen. Already he was recognised as one of the most fluent Māori interpreters in the colony — and in February 1842, out of a dozen capable men available, the government chose him as interpreter for the trial of Maketu: the first criminal sitting of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, under Chief Justice Martin.
Maketu was a young Ngāpuhi chief who had murdered five people. The trial required George Junior to bridge two entirely different systems of law and justice — explaining to a full courtroom of Māori observers the presumption of innocence, the role of the jury, the meaning of the oath. His account of the trial, written decades later in his memoir Notes on Early Life in New Zealand, is one of the most compelling documents of early colonial Aotearoa. Maketu was convicted and hanged. George Junior's rendering of the proceedings was so precise and fair that not one of the many Māori scholars present ever found occasion to correct him.
He was subsequently appointed sub-protector at Wellington in 1842 — at nineteen, over his father's protestation that he was too young. In 1844 he joined the New Zealand Company's surveying party to Otago as Māori advocate, preparing the deed that conveyed the land for the future settlement of Dunedin. During the Hone Heke war of 1845 he acted as Governor Grey's interpreter.
The minister
In 1846 he resigned the civil service and sailed for England, entering Highbury Congregational College. He was ordained in 1851 at the Union Chapel, Islington, and returned to Hobart to take up the ministry of the Congregational Chapel near Collins Street — later building the new church in Davey Street in 1856. He would minister there for fifty-two years.
On 16 January 1853 he married Martha Hopkins, born in Hobart, daughter of the family that had cared for him as a boy — a connection that had been a thread through his entire life. They had eight children, of whom six survived them.
The educator and scholar
In Hobart, George Junior built a public life as significant as his father's had been in New Zealand. He was a leading voice for secular public education through the 1870s, writing principally for the Tasmanian Independent. He joined the Tasmanian Council of Education in 1878 and served as its president and chief examiner in 1880–81. He was a long-serving member of the Royal Society of Tasmania and a founder of the Hobart Debating and Literary Association.
He helped establish the University of Tasmania, and when it was formally constituted in 1890 he became its first Vice-Chancellor. He served as Chancellor from 1898 to 1907. His grandchildren and great-grandchildren would become the third generation in direct line to graduate from the university he built.
In 1903 he published Notes on Early Life in New Zealand — a memoir of his Bay of Islands childhood that remains a vivid primary source for the missionary period. He died in Hobart on 10 March 1913, aged ninety, having lived through the entire arc of Aotearoa's colonial history and Tasmania's transformation into a modern society. He was, across both hemispheres, his father's son.