William Nicholas Willis was an Australian politician and newspaper proprietor.
Background
Willis was born in Mudgee, New South Wales and educated in a denominational school at Mudgee and briefly at Street Mary"s School in Sydney. He left school at nine to support his mother after his father"s departure to California, first as an office boy.
Career
He eventually became a successful hawker along the Macquarie, Darling and Bogan Rivers. He bought the Central Australian and Bourke Telegraph. Willis founded the Truth in 1890.
He was the member for The Barwon from 1894 to 1904.
He had become a supplier of horses and fodder to the British Army in South Africa and he recruited Australian bushmen as scouts and sharpshooters during the Boer War. John Haynes constantly accused Willis and Paddy Crick of corrupt land deals in the Newsletter.
On the appointment of a Royal Commission under William Owen to investigate the administration of the Lands Department in 1905, Willis fled to Western Australia and South Africa. He was brought back to Sydney in 1906, but although tried twice for obtaining money by false pretences, fraud and conspiracy, the juries failed to agree on a verdict.
Willis moved to London about 1910.