Ranken was the eldest son of Thomas Ranken, a solicitor, and his wife Jean Campbell nee Logan of Ayrshire, Scotland and the nephew of George and Arthur Ranken of Bathurst, New South Wales who came to Australia in the 1820s. He was educated at Ayr Academy and trained as a surveyor before leaving for Australia in 1851. Ranken was employed as a gold-buyer in the Ovens District of Victoria for the Bank of New South Wales in 1853. He occupied three runs in the Wide Bay and Burnett districts of Queensland with William Landsborough in 1855 then went back to Scotland in 1858, marrying Fanny Sarah Shaw in Ayr in 1859. He returned to Australia later that year with his bride and they settled in Rockhampton, Queensland. In 1863-64 Ranken formed an auctioneering and commission agency with William Rea and in March 1868 became Commissioner for Crown Lands for Port Curtis.
Ranken was acquitted of a charge of murder in September 1869 after having fired a revolver near Rea in a jealous outburst the preceding month. Having been discharged from the public service, he moved to Sydney and joined his brother and another partner in a city stock and station agency. In 1876 he settled in East St. Leonards, becoming an alderman and mayor in 1886. He wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald on land questions under the pseudonym 'Capricornus' and in 1879 was a member of a royal commission into the lands department whose report provided the framework for the Crown Lands Act of 1884. Ranken joined his brother in a surveying business at Young around 1888 and became a Justice of the Peace, a member of the local Land Board and an active member of the Phoenix Literary and Debating Society.
As well as his creative literary efforts, Ranken wrote as 'Capricornus' Remarks on Our Land System in Queensland (1866), Bush Essays (1872), Colonisation in 1876 (1876), The Squatting System of Australia (1875), Homestead Settlement : grazing, past, present, and future (1877), The Land Law of the Future (1877) and The Dry Country (1884?). He also co-authored The Morris-Ranken Land Report (1883) and wrote The Federal Geography of British Australasia (1891).
(Source: Adapted from David Denholm, H. J. Gibbney, 'Ranken, George (1827 - 1895)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 6, MUP, 1976, pp 7-8.)
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