His son, cricketer and Australian rules football pioneer Tom Wills, grew up as a lone white child among the Djab wurrung Aboriginal tribes of Mount William.

Due to being an exposed peak in the west of Victoria, Mount William features especially cool maximum temperatures throughout the year.

Winter cloud cover is profound; with an extraordinary 26 days of precipitation in July, constituting an annual total of 215 days—quite possibly the highest figure of any site in mainland Australia.

Daily maximum temperatures can struggle above the single digits even in summer, and on such days the afternoon and mid-day readings can be near to 0 °C (32 °F) in extreme cases such as in December 2022.

The peak can be classed as a cold and moist Mediterranean climate (Köppen Csb) on account of the low summer rainfall − in February averaging only 32.2 millimetres (1.27 in) of rain.