Willie Wimmera, an Aboriginal boy, was ten years old when clergyman Lloyd Chase brought him from Melbourne to Reading in 1851. Tragically, he became ill and died only a few months after his arrival. He is buried in Reading Old Cemetery, his grave marked ‘An Australian boy’.

A member of the Wotjobaluk People from the Wimmera region of Victoria, Australia, Willie couldn’t have been further from home – or in a place more different. What was he doing here? Who knew him and where did he live?

A contemporary memoir, republished here for the first time, provides the starting point for this investigation. With information gleaned from the 1851 UK Census and other primary sources, Mary Chambers paints a fascinating picture of Willie Wimmera – creative, curious, affectionate, and sometimes rebellious – and his ‘kind hosts’, the people closest to him during the short time he spent in England.