William Henry Thomes was born at Portland, Maine, but grew up in Boston. At eighteen he went to sea, sailing for the hide trade between Boston and California around Cape Horn. On one of these trips, Thomes left the ship. He stayed in California for three years before returning to Boston where he worked as a printer. The Californian gold rush drew him back to the west coast, but the failure of his employer led him to take a job as caretaker of an abandoned ship. When a crew was assembled, the ship sailed to Hawaii, Guam, Manila and China. Between the years 1852 and 1854 Thomes spent at least a year in Australia and travelled from Melbourne through the bush to Ballarat where he probably kept a store.
After his Australian sojourn, Thomes returned to the Boston printing trade. His career as a novelist began in 1864 with the publication of The Gold Hunter's Adventures, or Life in Australia. Thomes wrote nine other novels or autobiographical narratives, but only four of these have anything to do with Australia. In a 1957 article Brian Elliott wrote that Thomes 'belongs ... to the American west in spirit, even when he writes about the Australian bush', exhibiting the indirect influence of fronteir novelists such as James Fenimore Cooper. Thomes returned regularly to California and once led a pilgrimage of old pioneers on a rail tour of the state.
