When Reay was a boy he moved with his family to Williamstown, Melbourne and was educated at the Church of England School, and later King's College in East Melbourne. He went to sea at the age of thirteen, but disembarked in Dunedin and found work as a softgoods clerk. Reay returned to Melbourne on the Tararoa (later shipwrecked) and worked for nine years for the Victorian Sugar Company at Yarraville. He married Lucinda Braithwaite Broadbent on 10 April 1882.
Reay first became involved in journalism when he purchased the Coleraine Albion in June 1883 and subsequently bought the Port Melbourne Standard. In 1887-90 he was editor of the Hamilton Spectator, and was then employed in 1891 by W. H. Fitchett as leader-writer and assistant editor of the Melbourne Daily Telegraph. When it closed in 1892 he began working at the Weekly Times and subsequently for the Herald as literary editor and later associate editor.
As an officer of the Victorian Mounted Rifles from 1886, in October 1899 Reay accompanied the first Australian contingent to the South African War as correspondent for the Herald and the South Australian Register. He was awarded the South African medal for special military service at Jasfontein. His book, Australians in War (1900), contained one particular extract, 'The Highland Brigade buries its dead', which became a classic of war reporting. In 1903 Reay retired from the Mounted Rifles with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
In 1900 Reay joined the Legislative Assembly as the member for East Bourke Boroughs. In 1904 he became managing editor of the Herald, which commissioned him to prepare a report on the voluntary training scheme in Switzerland, published as The Swiss Army (1907). From 1911 Reay was the Herald's representative in London. On the outbreak of World War I, Reay was appointed as divisional commander of the Metropolitan Special Constabulary and in 1915 rose to the rank of inspector-general . He wrote a book describing these experiences, The Specials : How They Served London : The Story of the Metropolitan Special Constabulary (1920).
William Reay died at Woolwich Memorial Hospital, London, and was survived by his wife and five daughters.
Major source: Australian Dictionary of Biography
