Talk:Tom Wills

message: :I've posted a pointer to your comments at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket. Tintin (talk) 10:26, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Some sources (eg. ) say Molonglo Plains, which I think is near Queanbeyan.  A few others say Gundagai or Cootamundra on the other side of current day Canberra, and some say Parramatta.  Geoffrey Blainey's A game of our own would be an excellent source but alas I don't have it.  Here's a map. -- I@n ≡ talk 14:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me. -- I@n ≡ talk 01:30, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikiproject requests and responses 

message: Tom Wills was born near what is now called 'Gundagai' no matter what others may want to claim about a highly significant Australian sporting person and this is recorded in the offical records of NSW such as NSW BDM and NSW State Archives.
:Mine says "Molonglo, near Canberra" too. – AlbinoMonkey (Talk) 05:48, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We have reliable sources saying Molonglo.  If an extract of his entry at the NSW Births Deaths and Marriages can be scanned and posted here, then that would be excellent and a worthy addition to the article as well. -- I@n ≡ talk 06:19, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gundagai again 

message: *I hear and sympathise with the editor posting about his family history.  The issue would be is a birth certificate a more reliable source compared with the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Presumably the ADB researcher had access to the BDM as well as other sources. Wikipedia has only a few policies - No original research, [[|cite reliable sources, WP:Verifiability.  Citing a reference such as the Australian Dictionary of Biography allows us to meet those policies.  It is properly researched.  It doesn't mean it is 100% accurate, but the refutation of that accuracy is difficult.
:Question  for the anon editor - do you have copy of the birth certificate?  The number is only a reference.  The certificate will contain some detail, perhaps including place of birth, midwife, older siblings (including deceased siblings), parents place of marriage (not always reliable I know from my own genealogical studies, ...  If you have a copy would you be prepared please to transcribe it for us?  If you don't have a copy of the certificate, then family oral history is not sufficient to refute the ADB.--A Y Arktos\talk 08:23, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But isn't it worth adding a mention in the article about this confusion ? Tintin (talk) 11:18, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If it's not obvious which place is right, then yes, of course it should be mentioned. JPD (talk) 11:33, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I completely agree concerning the location of the station, the usefulness of the certificates, and so on, but I@n does say above that "some sources" say Gundagai/Cootamundra, etc. I expect that the ADB is right, but if these "other sources" are similar in reliability, then they should also be cited.  JPD (talk) 11:51, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I confess that I can now no longer recall where else I saw Gundagai mentioned other than the assertion of our IP friend.  Perhaps I was just being sympathetic to his cause.  A google search  returns nought. -- I@n ≡ talk 13:40, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Response re Reliable sources and birth certificate ?

message: In response to the suggestions above:
*Why doesnt Wikipedia obtain a birth certificate for Thomas Wills and have a qualified historian decide where Tom was born.  
**Please read WP:NOR which is policy and will I think answer your question.--A Y Arktos\talk 12:33, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  More on no original research 

message: *Thank you to the editor using IP 203.54.9.214 on the night of 4 July for the alternate source  - before giving us the link, we could not see what you were referring to.  
**Please please try to format your additions to this discussion chronologically and please sign on talk pages using four tildes ~~~~?  This will automatically produce your name or your IP address, and the time and date.  Five tildes (~~~~~) will convert to a date stamp with the current date and time, without adding a signature or an IP address.  Note an account means your username /log-in stays the same regardless of a changing IP address -it can be pseudonymous - ie doesn't reveal your identity.
*The author of the ADB entry was W. F. (Bill) Mandle, former Professor of History, University of Canberra, and regarded as founder of sports history in Australia.  Among other publications, he wrote a study of cricket and Australian nationalism in the nineteenth century.
::Professors have the freedom of their universites to say and publish whatever they like.  I have never heard of Professor Mandle so I guess his importance is only recognised by some.  'Sport' is a huge money spinner for various interests, including political interests so a publication that had the 'founder' of AFL born in a favourable place, counts.  Also, one of the main streets in Melbourne is named for Toms dad.  Melb Uni would probably know about Gundagai I have decided as Toms Dad became a politician down that way.  My interest in Tom is that I know he was born at Gundagai and it gets very annoying to continually read he was born elsewhere as where a person is born, counts.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.54.9.9 (talk • contribs) 11:43, 5 July 2006   (UTC+ 10 hours)
::*I am sure Professor Mandle hasn't heard of you either. Please try resisiting inserting comments into the middle of another person's comment.--A Y Arktos\talk 01:50, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The above isnt how 'resisting' is spelled.  Can you be more careful with your spelling and grammer Arktos.  You keep putting your comments in the middle of what I post here also.  That is like pushing my cow off the Common so yours can graize, then whinging when I do the same back to u.  
Only the educated understand that 'Professor' titles just indicate such Profs understand maybe more than most, how much they dont know -so if the prof doesnt know me I am sure that wont be any suprise to him given his cap and gown.  Its only Y.10s from 1955 get overawed by Prof titles.   There is no wikipedia entry for W Mandel or any ADB entry?  It sounds like he is a contemporary fella given he was at UC.  If so, he isnt the inventor of sport history.  The old newspapers did that copiously in colonial oz and that has been continued right through since.  W Mandel may have put out some publications that dealt with some hisotric aspects of sport, maybe getting info from the earlier sources,  but invented its recording?   I'm just reading a 1906 account of a medal my Dad won for being in the team that won the Rugby premiership that year.  Bill Mandel didnt first record that.  A newspaper did. 
*I think, given we actually have an on-line source, it would be acceptable to cite it as an alternative source of facts.  The family history seems thorough, which implies careful research and access to original documents that have been interpreted as a group - I would be happy to accept it as a reliable source.--A Y Arktos\talk 01:05, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Source for alternate birthplace and date

message: The claim that he won Champion Of The Colony award is disputed as there is no evidence that such an award was ever given to Victorian footballers.
RossRSmith (talk) 11:36, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Football 

message: I just read TS Wills Cooke note above that they have a family map that shows Burra Burra being 10 miles from Queanbeyan.  Its very obvious that the Wills were at Burra Burra Gundagai, not Burra Burra Queanbeyan in the era of Toms birth.  I will put that other old newspaper reference re that that I have here somewhere, up soon.  As you can see on the article page, I posted the 'Argus' mention re where the Wills lived in that era, the other day - but there is yet another old newspaper mention of them too, written in around 1836.  
If anyone wants to check where Burra Burra Gundagai was in that era there is a map online at the NLA listed under "Binalong Police District".  This map shows from Binalong to around the Five Mile/Coolac area near Gundagai, but also goes a bit to the west of the current Coolac town area.  To the left of Coolac on the map is 'Bongongalong'. There is another spelling of this town name - bongongolong.  Just to the west of that locality is a creek with two branches at the headwater of Bongongalong Ck.  One of these creek branches is Burra Burra Ck (the other Mitta Mitta Ck) and its there along Burra Burra Ck the Wills lived.  My rellies used to live out there a few years after the Wills but I have also been up there in recent times and in the 1960s.
I'd love to know more re this map of the Queanbeyan that shows Burra Ck.  There may have been a Burra Ck near Queanbeyan though as Burra just means kangaroo so there are likely stacks of roo creeks.  The 'Queen of the Woods' (a universal folkloric concept) is at Gundagai so perhaps that Queanbeyan reference is about landscape folklore, and it got moved a bit east.  It might just mean though too that there is some Cambrian geology near today's Queanbeyan. The folkloric stuff is not out of line with some of the literature stuff noted in Gundagai's landscape via street names etc.  Street names are archaeology so that they exist gives a scientific underpinning to folkloric cultural landscape stuff in the same area.  I will now go and try and find where the name 'Queanbeyan' originated.
jjones
Gundagai  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.54.9.203 (talk) 08:31, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Burra Burra 10 Miles From Queanbeyan?

message: http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-rm1799  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.54.9.203 (talk) 08:41, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Above Binalong Police District map URL

message: I was just reading some of the online content authored by or credited to TS Wills-Cooke including the content at the top of this discussion page.
GA Robinson, the Protector of Aborigines for Port Phillip District (which came to the southern bank of the Murrumbidgee), noted the violence of Horatio Wills and how Horatio noted this violence himself.  Robinson's papers are in various State archives if anyone would like to check themselves.
Greg de Moore, (a Sydney psychiatrist), author of 'Tom Wills', has placed his recent book on Google books on limited access, and some of Horatio Wills behaviour (sourced from the Archives), is noted in it.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.54.9.171 (talk) 23:01, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: T.S.Wills Cooke

message: Wik records Queanbeyan as originating from the word 'Quinbean'.  Not far from the other known word 'jinbean' is it that I have recorded at Gundagai, jin meaning the obvious (or white lady as per the beverage, in ref to the old cambrian geology), and the bean or been also recorded for river (Tumut R no less or doomutt or two dogs) with Been being the property of the first white who legally took up land in the Tumut area, James Horatio Rose of Yass whose land was at the junction of the Tumut or Been R and the Little River near tot he current Tumut township.  Two Dog Ck is the Mutt Muttama Ck that the Bongongalong Ck runs into on the NLA map.  Maybe colonial settlers moved and put the names that were at their previous address, on their new landscape stuff?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.54.9.203 (talk) 09:14, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Queanbeyan Meaning in ref to Burra Ck

message: "THE NATIVE DOG.
The Perth Gazette, and Independent Journal of Politics and News  
Friday 5 September 1851 from NLA Beta Newspapers 
A correspondent (Mr. H. S. Wills,) of
the Sydney Herald, writes : -
A writer in your journal of a late date has treated on the ravages committed by the wild dog of the colony in her northern provinces, and advocates some legislatorial measure for their extermination. Permit me to observe that these sanguinary pests of the sheep-fold are to be extirpated with the greatest ease, and at very little cost, much more speedily than any act of the kind alluded to would be likely to pass our chambers. One ounce of strychnia in chrystals, it being less subject to adulteration in that state, will clear any station in the colony. This remedy may, or ought
to be, purchasable in Sydney for thirty or thirty-five shillings. So that whilst my old friends north of Murrumbidgee talk of wild dogs, they might get rid of them.  Strychnia has been tried in this district with astonishing success. A 'brush' is a thing now to be wondered at. The result to myself alone, has been a saving of at
least £350 a-year, not to speak of the annoyance and torture I am relieved from.  The bait for a dog is a piece of fresh meat of about eight ounces, into which a small quantity of the poison is inserted.  This, suspended from an overhanging branch, beyond the reach of wild cats, by a thin piece of twine, under a " nosable "
piece of carrion, is almost sure to secure any particular dog. But to 'smash the breed' without mercy, attach a dead sheep, or kangaroo, or emu, or bullock's paunch, or any carrion to be obtained readily, to the axle of a light cart, and at sundown
(to cheat the crows) take a road, or a cattle track, through the parts principally infested, and as you go along leave a bait, in some such manner as I have described, at intervals of a mile or thereabouts. We generally drop a few pieces of unpoisoned
meat around the bait, to arrest the dog in his rapid career on scent. It will be necessary to take up the baits which re- main untouched at daylight, if you wish to economise. This is a simple way of effectually ridding a station of a most outrageous pest. I may observe, also, that strychnia is found to be an admirable spe-
cific in attacks of the eagle-hawk during the lambing season. No later in fact than this morning, I destroyed two in about ten minutes, which I observed hovering over the lambs of some imported ewes.  Touch the heart and liver of a dead lamb with a pinch of the poison, and your success is certain. The extermination of the
wild dog instead of being a matter for the interference of the legislature, is in fact simply a question between the settler and his merchant, or apothecary.”  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.54.9.4 (talk) 12:40, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: The Native Dog

message: You know, Tom Wills was born in the area to the west of Gundagai and east of Bethungra.  
Famous world cricketer Don Bradman was born at Cootamundra but his family also lived a bit to the west of where the Wills' did.  
Many of the Dons relatives still live in this area including one very near to me.  
Famous horse trainer Gaye Waterhouse's dad (famous horse trainer Tommy Smith), was also one of Don Bradman's close relatives.  
There may be a chance that the Wills and the Smiths had some connection and the cricketing skill was passed down on more than one branch.  The Smiths were in this area very early on in colonial times.
I see Cricketing Australia is promoting the first Australian cricket tem to tour England in 1868.  This team was led by Tom Wills of Gundagai, (really of Gamahe that then became Yammatree to the west of Gundagai).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.54.9.187 (talk) 04:45, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Tom and Don

message: According to Greg de Moore's biography, Tom died at around 1:30 pm, 2nd, not 3rd of May.  I'll edit it. Wikipeeeeedia (talk) 01:49, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date of Death 

message: Turns out that Verney Cameron is correct name, despite some initial thought that it should be Vernon. Apparently, he was a cousin of Verney Lovett Cameron, a 19th C explorer.
Info cited here: notice for 
Verney Lovett Cameron (Melb CC)
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/5984176
mentioned on this page - 2nd column about 4th para from bottom
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/page/258480
RossRSmith (talk) 07:52, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Fascinating. He's probably notable enough for his own Wiki article. - HappyWaldo (talk) 08:08, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Funeral attendees 

message: Substituted at 09:01, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: I've skipped the lead for now, but I think that will need quite a bit of work. A few thoughts on the first part of the article:
*I don't think we need such a detailed family background. I'd stick to a sentence or two on Horatio's family, a little about how he met Elizabeth and then get onto Tom's childhood. I would argue that we could cut most of the first two paragraphs of Early life as we only should be focussing on Tom. Perhaps just having something like this:
::Wills was born on 19 August 1835 on the Molonglo Plain near modern-day Canberra, in what was the British penal colony of New South Wales, as the elder child of Horatio and Elizabeth (née McGuire) Wills. Tom was a third-generation Australian of convict descent: his mother was born to convicts from Ireland, and his paternal grandfather was Edward Wills, an English highwayman whose death sentence for armed robbery was commuted to transportation. Tom's father worked in the Gazette office, becoming editor in 1832, during which time he met Elizabeth, an orphan from Parramatta. They married in December 1833. Tom was baptised Thomas Wentworth Wills in St Andrew's, Sydney, after statesman William Wentworth.
::Horatio turned to pastoralism in the mid-1830s and moved with his family to the sheep run Burra Burra on the Molonglo River. Although athletic from an early age, Tom was prone to illness, and at one stage in 1839 his parents "almost despaired of his recovery". The following year, in light of explorer Thomas Mitchell's discovery of "Australia Felix", the Willses, with shepherds and their families, were among the first settlers of the Grampians in the colony's Port Phillip District (now the state of Victoria). After squatting on Mount William, they moved a few miles north through the foothills of Mount Ararat, named so by Horatio because "like the Ark, we rested there". Horatio went through a period of intense religiosity while in the Grampians; at times his diary descends into incantation, "perhaps even madness", and wanted himself and Tom to base their lives on the New Testament.
*I would also recommend using in-text attribution to name the author of some of these quotes, particularly ones that give an opinion such as "perhaps even madness". Sarastro1 (talk) 20:25, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the input, Sarastro1. I'll go ahead with the in-text attribution and some of the rewording. I'm not so sure about the removal of certain details from the family origins paragraph. Based on your version, it's no longer clear how the family went from lowly convict origins to amassing considerable wealth (Edward's mercantile business), nor is it explained how Horatio became a newspaperman (his mother remarried to the colony's first printer). Tom's family history reads like a list of Australian royalty. There's several other notable figures I could have included but decided not to. Horatio's autodidactism (which motivates him to ensure that Tom receives a classical education at the most prestigious school) and his nationalism/republicanism (which he fed to Tom as a child and expressed most forecfully in The Currency Lad) are also missing. These aspects go a long way in explaining the trajectory of Tom's life. I can't find the source right now, but Tom's biographer said something like "When you get down to it, this is really a story about a father and his son". I was pretty chuffed that I managed to condense all of this into a paragraph. Having looked at other FA biographies, I thought it was an ideal length as well. What suggestions do you have re lead? - HappyWaldo (talk) 05:15, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The lead is quite wordy, and could probably be trimmed a little; but as I say I haven't looked properly yet. Re his family, my only issue here is that the article is about Tom Willis, not his father. If needs be, his father's article could be expanded but I really wouldn't be including too much detail or explanation about Horatio in Tom's article. The reader can click the link if they want to know more; what goes here should only be essential to knowing about Tom's life. Sarastro1 (talk) 09:48, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I used FAs like Babe Ruth as a point of reference for lead size. The trouble is that Wills not only dominated a sport like Ruth, but founded another. Add on top the controversies, tragedies and off-field exploits and it's like cramming five lives in one. - HappyWaldo (talk) 04:37, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thinking about FAC 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130902234618/http://www.sopa.nsw.gov.au/resource_centre/park_news/park_news/new_training_facility_for_gws_giants_officially_launched_at_sydney_olympic_park to http://www.sopa.nsw.gov.au/resource_centre/park_news/park_news/new_training_facility_for_gws_giants_officially_launched_at_sydney_olympic_park
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: For anyone interested, the newspaper article referred to in this ABC News report of 2021  is The Chicago Tribune, 27 Jan 1895, P34, which is firmly behind the Newspapers.com paywall, so I imagine most people have not read it. 
Attributed to a person called "G", it was headed "Old Days in Australia" and it was syndicated in other US papers in the months afterwards. It is not an exhaustive account of Wills' life or the Cullin-la-ringo massacre, rather it's about how Australia has changed since the "old days". After some passing references to "Bushwhackers" and bankers, and some absurd accounts of excesses during the goldrushes which the author suggests they observed, (eg eating a banknote in a sandwich) the Tommy Wills story takes up most of the second half of the account. But tellingly this bit begins with the claim that the "gradual disappearance of the Aboriginal has... made a change very much for the better", and this is the tone of the remainder of the article (its always a shock to come across this type of racist commentary even with the distance of time). The author claims to be using Wills' words, but misplaces the whole Cullin-la-ringo event in Victoria, rather than Queensland. It quotes Wills as having had a strange premonition before reaching the homestead, and then on arrival quotes him as saying he found the "heads of mother, father and three sisters stuck on sticks placed in a row..." The story of recovering his Zingari jacket from "a dirty, shrinking, greasy brute" while he was on a reprisal party then follows, with the claim that subsequently Wills had a "sort of general prescriptive right to rid the country of what he called d-d vermin."
The whole story fits with the colonial attitudes of the time, and obviously most closely reflects the attitudes of the unknown author – not necessarily Wills, who had been dead 15 years. It is also notable that this US account is quite removed from almost anything else known about Wills - or even his movements. I was surprised the ABC gave it the prominence it did. Nickm57 (talk) 11:00, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Sadly I am not shocked by the racist commentary - while uncommon, such comments are not limited by the distance of time. You will be interested to read Martin Flanagan's views in the Age , which sets out many reasons to be skeptical of the account in the Chicago Tribune, including that Wills' mother and sisters were in Geelong. But Flanagan also says that the article cannot be ignored, largely because there is much about Wills that is unknown. --Find bruce (talk) 21:53, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. The article by Flanagan is masterful. Nickm57 (talk) 22:30, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chicago Tribune article of 1895 

message: How should be tackle this information? It came to light several weeks ago, but I've been reticent to mention it due to its controversial finding, especially as Wills was known for his integration with aboriginals. That's obviously not to say he couldn't've done a revenge attack while also being friendly to other aboriginals.
I just think this bears mentioning it, as it seems very odd not to mention a dedicated feature article on a reputable Australian website. Thoughts?
Edit: I've just seen the above topic that discusses this. Good to know it's been assessed, and I will leave it be. Posthumous accounts like this are difficult to rely on, and we shouldn't besmirch Wills based on such flimsy evidence.
Electricmaster (talk) 02:24, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Research discovery suggests AFL pioneer Tom Wills participated in massacres of Indigenous people"