Upon completion of his articles he went to England and successfully sat for the intermediate and final examinations of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

In London his circle of friends included George Washington Lambert and Arthur Streeton, and he served as secretary of the Chelsea Arts Club.

Wilson travelled widely in Europe and the United States of America and became interested in the American Colonial style of architecture.

Wilson was an anti-Semite and during the 1930s and 40s an enthusiast for the cause of German and Italian Fascism, an enthusiasm based in large part on his embrace of climatic theories of creative development and, indirectly, the philosophies of Bergson, Nietzsche, and Hegel.

[12] William Hardy Wilson made drawings of a variety of subjects including early Australian domestic architecture,[13] colonial homesteads and churches,[14] and poultry and other birds.