Wilton Hack was born at Echunga but was educated in Cheshire, England and at Heidelberg University, Germany. On his return to South Australia he first worked on his father's station, then took up land in a mallee area which he named Pinnaroo. Forced off the land by the drought of 1867, he became drawing master in Adelaide schools.
In about 1870 he entered the Baptist ministry and pioneered social work among prisoners at Adelaide's Yatala Gaol, in 1873 going to Japan as a the leader of a group of Australian missionaries. In Nagasaki, he took over the English-speaking newspaper, the Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express. On returning to Australia he was employed in mining in New South Wales, and later Western Australia. He attempted to establish a socialist village settlement for the unemployed at Mount Remarkable in 1893.
Becoming very interested in Theosophy, he made several trips to India and Ceylon. He lived for a while in Glenelg, where he devoted his time to painting, and apparently spent his last years in Western Australia.
His writing reflected his concern with issues of faith and life. As well as his selected verse Thoughts (1905) he published The Human Soul (1909) in which he compares Christianity with Buddhism and other religions, and Invocation, a prayer for use in his class during 1912.
