His father John Hutchison ( – 1843) of Leith, Scotland arrived in Melbourne, Victoria in December 1839, by the ship Saint Mungo, and took up land there for a cattle station. His father died and his mother (née McKenzie) married Andrew Dunn (1819 – 12 December 1901) and moved to Dunnoo Dunnoo near Edenhope, Victoria.
William was educated at John Whinham"s North Adelaide Grammar School.
After a dispute with neighbors regarding the legality of the land they were occupying, they moved in 1848 to Barooka, near Kingston Southeast in South Australia. Around 1850 they moved to Woolmit, previously known as Biscuit Flat, 20 miles (32 km) from Robe. In 1862 Hutchison and Dunn purchased Murra Binna station from "Tommy" Woods, and ran that property, where he was a successful racehorse breeder and Adam Lindsay Gordon was a frequent visitor.
In 1876 they purchased Morambro station of 127,000 acres (51,000 ha) from the Oliver brothers.
Hutchison acquired considerable additional property by the illegal process known as "dummying", using third parties who owned no property to "select" Government land secretly on his behalf. George Ash, of The Narracoorte Herald in an editorial questioned his fitness to hold the position of Justice of the Peace, and was successfully (and ruinously) sued by Hutchison, whose lawyer, Josiah Symon, Queen's Counsel conducted a masterfully technical case against Ash, which rendered practically all his evidence, including Crown Law documents and Hansard inadmissible.
Hutchison, who was badly affected by the Depression of the early 1890s, left Morambro for Victoria around 1895, settled in Gippsland, and died in Malvern. Hutchison married Harriett Reid (c 1840 – 21 September 1880) on 10 May 1864.
Harriett was a sister of the Review
Richardson Reid, of Trinity Church, Adelaide. They had five sons:
William John Reid Hutchison (9 April 1873 – ) married Annie Elizabeth Cooke ( – ) on 28 April 1896, lived at Magill, South Australia
J. R. Hutchison, of Padthaway, South Australia
A. R. Hutchison, of Narracoorte
Egbert William "Bert" Hutchison ( – 14 August 1925) of Melbourne
A. J. Hutchison of Narracoorte
Julia was the widow of Inspector Reid, and had a daughter Alice Ann Reid ( – ), who married John Thomas Morris of Kalangadoo on 20 January 1887.
