While William Watt was not born on Phillip Island, he lived here – according to the Australian Dictionary of Biography – for about six years, and so we can still claim him as our own.

Watt was the 24th Premier of Victoria.

He later became a federal politician and speaker of the House of Representatives, acting as Prime Minister of Australia from April 1918 until August 1919, during Billy Hughes' service in the Imperial War Cabinet and attendance at the Versailles peace conference.

Watt (1871-1946) was born in Barfold, near Kyneton in central Victoria and after his father’s death, his family moved to Phillip Island and six years later to North Melbourne.

Joshua Gliddon, in his book Phillip Island In Picture and Story, writes that Watt lived in a house “like most others on the island then” of wattle and daub.

He notes that Watts Road in Ventnor is named after the Phillip Island school boy.

“If we had been going along the bush track on what is now Watts Road, about the 1870s, we might have seen a bright-eyed laddie among other children, on their four-mile walk to the school,” Gliddon wrote.

“He was the youngest of a family of 11 and there might have been something about this sturdy little chap that lingered in our memory…because fate had marked him for great service to his country.”