Hilder was born in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, the fourth son and eighth child of Henry Hilder, an engineer originally from Sussex.
•
In 1901 he was transferred to Goulburn, and the following year to Bega, on the south coast of New South Wales, where he joined some friends in weekend sketching.
A well-known painter in Australia, Jesse Jewhurst Hilder (1881–1916), who never traveled to Burma or met its artists, had a large influence on the painting of both Ba Zaw and Saya Saung, and through them, many other Burmese painters.