Sir William Windeyer (1834-1897) was a politician and judge. One of the first undergraduates to study at the University of Sydney, he developed a particular interest in education and the rights of women - he was responsible for the Married Women's Property Act of 1879, and was Founding Chairman of the university's Women's College. As a young man he worked as a reporter on Henry Parkes's radical liberal newspaper Empire. Windeyer represented West Sydney in the Legislative Assembly intermittently from 1860; in 1876 and 1878-1879 he was attorney general in the Parkes-Robertson coalition. Parkes wrote in Fifty Years in the Making of Australian History (1892) that 'My friend Windeyer was a young man of high spirit, bold and decisive in the common incidents of life, with a strong capacity for public affairs. He would have made as good a soldier as he has made a sound Judge.'
Gift of the Windeyer family 2009
Sir William Windeyer (age 22 in 1856)
Jim Windeyer (16 portraits)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Family affections are preserved in a fine selection of intimate portraits.
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