David John Wheal was a bootmaker, salesman, businessman and a chief president of the Australian Natives' Association.
His obituary notes that he was a man of ‘intense religious fervour’, but he believed that religion should be a private matter.
Debates where a popular part of community life at both the ANA and the Lydiard Street Mutual Improvement Association.
They did not want that sort of thing to exist in Australia, and as a society, he believed they were sowing the seeds of political and social freedom.
[26] ANA local debates and annual conference resolutions were instrumental in significantly influencing the development of Australian society and political form while remaining non-political and non-sectarian.
During Wheal's time on the board and as vice and chief president, many branches moved motions and promoted the idea of nativism.
[28] The ANA Intercolonial Federation Conference was held in Melbourne on 22 January 1890, with Wheal one of the Victorian delegates and as vice president.
[29] This Conference brought together ANA representatives from each state and building on Henry Parkes 1899 Tenterfield Oration initiated progress towards an Australian Federation.
[34][35] His obituary in the Advance Australia remembered him as ‘one of that band of honest, plodding, patriotic men who laid the foundations of the Australian Natives’ Association’.