sketcher and pastoralist, was born in England, a son of Joseph Harris MD and Lucy, née Strelley. The family reached Western Australia in the Cygnet on 27 January 1833; William’s father was colonial surgeon from 1844 until his death four years later. W.E.S. Harris worked on properties owned by his father and brother Joseph Strelley Harris, a pastoralist and district magistrate. In 1852-53 William visited the Victorian goldfields. Returning to Guildford, he married Mary Gregory of Rainsworth, sister of the explorers H.C. and A.C. Gregory.
Harris leased Rainsworth in 1859, then purchased it in 1863. His naive watercolours (Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth), Floods at Guildford and Hamersleys’ Preston Homestead near Guildford , record rescue scenes during the floods of 1872. In the 1890s he revisited England where in 1896 Emily Ann Jones became his second wife. He died at Midland (WA) on 22 March 1901, survived by Emily and their only child, Herbert Robey Strelley Harris (born the previous year to a father aged eighty-two), who lived only until the following year.
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
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- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
