Bill Page was born at Grafton, NSW, of a pioneering family who valued culture and education. He was at first a teacher and graduated BA Sydney, in 1910. He then entered the faculty of medicine and after graduating in 1915 went to World War I as a captain in the AAMC Reserve. The results of shell-shock intrigued him.

After the War he stayed in London and became a medical officer in Bethlem Royal Hospital, one of the two oldest psychiatric hospitals in England. Later he became superintendent of the Earlswood Royal Hospitals for Mental Defect. In these positions he had scope for his flair for teaching, and many of his colleagues, anticipating a bright future in England, were disappointed when family problems necessitated his return to Australia. While in London he also studied at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen Square. He held a number of positions in Sydney: honorary psychiatrist Sydney Hospital 1926-46, honorary psychiatrist St Vincent's Hospital 1928-46, consultant psychiatrist to the Repatriation Commission 1925-46, when he retired. In the late twenties he was honorary demonstrator in neurological anatomy at Sydney University. From 1942 to 1946 he was consultant psychiatrist to the Army at 113 Australian General Hospital, Concord, NSW.

In later years when he was medical superintendent of Bayview Private Hospital, his panache and enthusiasm as a teacher of students won him great regard, and, as HM North pointed out in his obituary, an eloquent memorial to him was the fact that two of his former students occupied professorial chairs in our universities. One of his brothers was the late Sir Earle Page, who left a thriving surgical practice to enter Federal Parliament in 1919. On leaving Grafton he tried in vain to persuade Bill to take on his surgical practice.

A large outpatient clinic at Sydney Hospital never deterred him, and his skill and kindness with his patients won their affection and the warm respect of nursing staff. He was well read in the classics and, between patients, a lingering impression might bring out an apt line or two from Shakespeare or the classics which he shared as an aside with his resident. Page never married. Perhaps he had a certain caution towards the opposite sex implied by the author of the Senior Year Book 1945-46. The author wrote perhaps puckishly, `Many a time he warned against marrying for one's thalamus and eulogised the delights of a date with Diana at forty, instead of adoring Amaryllis' (the shepherdess and country girl of classical poetry).