Reichsparteitag
Wilmot was born in Brighton, a suburb of Melbourne; he was the son of Reginald Wilmot, a sports journalist, and grandson of surveyor JGW Wilmot. He attended Melbourne Grammar School and then studied history, politics and law under Sir Ernest Scott at the University of Melbourne, where he resided at Trinity College and became interested in debating; after he graduated in 1936, he went on an international debating tour. One of the stops was in Nazi Germany where he went to a Nuremberg Rally. Wilmot began to work as a legal clerk in 1939.