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He was the first of the horsewhisperers - many would say he was the only one.
It was he who influenced Steve Jefferys - the wrangler who reared into the Olympic limelight at the Sydney Opening Ceremony.
He was the inspiration for scores of this country’s top horsemen.
James Douglas Wilton died 13 years ago before the plethora of whispering salesmen captured the hearts, minds and money of the timid and the gullible.
He was a great showman, yet he would have disliked being called a horse whisperer - and history proves him a poor salesman for when he died aged 83 on the NSW central coast, he was penniless.
He was not easy to get along with. His detractors would dismiss him as a grubby, grumpy curmudgeon. He did not suffer fools gladly. It was said by some that J. D. had more tactful ways with horses than he had with men. He had some sympathy for the flesh and blood he had in his hands but no time for dimwits who did not want to learn, or smart alecs who said they knew it all yet knew so very little.
His piercing blue eyes could see through a man - and see into the mind and soul of a horse. He used his eyes and his body to communicate with them. Some said how he did it was magic; others that it was a rare sixth sense. J. D. said it was simply common sense.
His knowledge was gained by a lifetime study of the horse’s mind and its reactions to the behaviour of man. Brought up in Sydney in a Randwick racing stable, he was only 10 when he began helping his father school steeplechasers. As an infant, his father would put him on a pillow and ride with him over hurdles.
His father told him he would never be very big or very heavy...
“You’ll not be able to manhandle or pull horses around, instead you’ll have to use your brain. You’ll have to learn how a horse thinks and handle it accordingly.”
At 13 he was apprenticed to a horsebreaking and droving firm in Willoughby. It was1917, and there were still stockyards in the heart of Sydney.
At 16, he moved on, and for the next 21 years worked on outback sheep and cattle stations.
Many of the station managers who employed him gave him good references because they bred good horses and they liked his breaking methods - he was not knocking about their top stock - ‘but’, Wilton once said, ‘they didn’t like me for myself’.
In 1940, he gave up breaking. He opened a riding school in Waitara on Sydney’s north shore, later moving to Casula in the outer west.
In the forties he had the time to train performing horses. From his early teenage years he had been interested in the education of the equine mind and was always trying to make horses do unusual things - lie down, sit up, walk on their knees, stand on little posts, walk narrow planks, carry heavy objects in their teeth and understand and act on commands.
The first member of the Wonder Horse Team was Tim, a 15 hh liver chestnut Thoroughbred gelding. All members of the Team had names beginning with ‘T’.
Tim was the first horse in the world to walk on his knees while carrying a rider and retrieving a flagpole at the same time. (Horses have no protective kneecaps and are born with an inherent fear of allowing them to touch the ground.) He could balance on a block which was 18 inches high and nine and a half in diameter, carrying a flag in his mouth at the same time while Wilton stood on Tim’s back twirling a lasso.
Before going on the road to become a full time travelling showman, J. D. Wilton wrote ‘Breaking of the Saddle Horse by Training’. The book’s preface described his feelings towards ‘experts’, especially ‘geniuses’ from overseas.
“Much has been written about the ‘breaking of a saddlehorse’ mostly by schoolgirls, colonels, captains, majors or other inexperienced elderly ladies of the British Isles.”
Obviously he was unimpressed. His 55 page book went on to sell 9,000 copies. And while it sold around Australia, its author travelled the country with the J. D. Wilton Wonder Horse, Rodeo Show and Circus.
Accompanying him was Kathleen Mumford.
“I met him when I was an instructor at his Waitara school. We never married. He’d been married once and had two sons, they both died. After that he didn’t want another family. I was with him for 40 years.”
Kathleen, who now lives in a retirement village, is 87. Wilton died a poor man, but he left her a legacy of sorts. He updated his first book in 1972, titling it, ‘The Horse and its Education’.
It has been revealed that this book has recently been reprinted and marketed without any rights and proceeds from its sale going to Kathleen. She employed the services of a solicitor. Allegedly he has, to date, done nothing to rectify this matter which appears to be both illegal and unfair.
Wilton was no businessman - he just was not interested. What he did care about was training - dogs as well as horses - and about performing.
A showman through and through, he would deliver the goods even if the onlookers were little more than half-a-dozen kids and a brown dog and he would go on with his act no matter what the weather was like.
Australia’s leading movie horse trainer, Heath Harris, remembers a day at the Kiama Show many years ago:
“An electrical storm had stopped everything on the grounds - except Jim and his horses.”
“Part one of his act involved two big cattle trucks with a steep ramp up one side, and another ramp down the other - between the two was a gangplank big enough to fit 12 horses. As a finale, he’d stand on top of the plank and call each horse by name - he always called them in a different order for every performance. Up they jumped and full-passed to the end. When they were in a row, he’d run across their backs cracking a stockwhip.”
“The torrential rain was sweeping into the horses’ eyes. Normally a horse will turn its rump to that kind of weather - Jim’s horses didn’t and the gale force winds were tearing down awnings and tents - they went on with their performance.”
Heath Harris was 14 when he questioned J. D. on why he did a particular thing with one of his horses.
“He spun around when I asked, and I thought he was going to tear pieces off me. His eyes were like laser beams. ‘You’re the first person in 40 years who’s ever asked me that. I’ll do it once more and you figure it out’. I figured it out. He said he’d do a couple of other things over the next few days. ‘You figure out what they are, and I’ll tell you if you’re right or wrong’.”
Heath picked them up. So, what were they?
“I’m not telling you. I’d only tell someone if they proved they could see what I had seen.”
“Jim was misunderstood. He looked at horses in a totally different way to other men. That’s what he taught me.”
People have asked Heath to do ‘whispering’ clinics. He has declined.
“For one thing I think it’s a load of gobbledygook, and, secondly I don’t have patience with people. I’d finish up dragging some fat old sheila off her horse and trying to choke her - I’d be out of the horse-whispering business before I started.”
Heath is passionate about Wilton, dedicating his ‘Movie Horses Down Under’ book to him in the eighties.
“If I get to know a quarter of what he knew, I’ll die happy,” says Harris.
Sydney horsebreaker, John Mooney, who in past years worked with Hollywood’s veteran movie horse trainer, Glenn Randall, snr. remembers Wilton as being uniquely gifted in training both horses and dogs.

Here is Tim the Wonder Horse carrying Kathleen Mumford on a swing - Jim said this was the most difficult act he ever taught a horse

J. D.’s Wonder Dog Team, which comprised of white alsatians whose names all began with ‘S’ delighted showground audiences as much as his horses.
“Besides being one of the world’s leading horsemen, he was a man who was very loyal to his country and heritage, something lacking in many Australians today,” Mooney remembers, “He believed in his principles and wouldn’t budge for love or money.”
“He gave me a great start in horsemanship and insisted, when training any animal, sympathy was as important an element as discipline.”
At one time a top trainer approached Wilton - he just could not make his pacer move as it had been bred to do. He had tried everything and read every training book available.”
“Jim got into the buggy and in two laps had it pacing. The trainer asked what was his secret? ‘These, boy’, he said lifting up his hands. Jim knew how to pressure the horse without antagonism. He’d given the horse confidence to do what he was bred naturally to do. At the beginning the horse had given him two or three steps. ‘Let him think, boy, then slowly build on it’. Finally the horse was searching to find the feel which helped him achieve what his trainer had found so elusive.”
Recreational rider and Sydney businessman, David Dowling, worked on the old man’s property, spending months absorbing his methods and techniques.
He has scores of anecdotes and will recite pearls of Wilton wisdom at the drop of a hat:
“You can’t teach all horses the same way and you can’t teach all horses all things.”
“Use no greater force against a horse than the horse used against you.”
“There is no bad bit, just bad hands.”
To an ‘experienced’ racehorse trainer trying vainly with ropes, whips and a gang of men to lead a horse onto a float: “For years you’ve stood at this horse’s shoulder and led it around - you’ve taught him not to step on top of you. Now you’re trying to haul it onto the ruddy float by standing in front of it and trying to yank it up the ramp - move to one side, son.” The horse went into the float.
David Dowling seems to sum up the feelings of all those who knew J. D. Wilton: “I say, unreservedly, to every horse-whisperer wherever they may be, Jim Wilton died forgetting more than they will ever know.”