Ponder was born in London, but his family moved to Adelaide in the same year he was born; his sister was prominent journalist and author Winifred Ponder. His family initially lived in Adelaide and Gawler, but moved to Kapunda in 1860, where he was educated and undertook a printing apprenticeship for the Kapunda Herald. He worked as a compositor for the Government Printing Office and the South Australian Register. He subsequently moved to The Advertiser, where he worked as city collector and wrote a regular cricket column. He was subsequently appointed by Sir Langdon Bonython as a sub-editor for The Express and Telegraph. Later, he was an advertising agent from 1897 to 1918, a director of the Co-Operative Building Society for thirty years, and governor of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. He was also a significant Freemason, occupying a number of positions in that movement.[2][3][4][5][6][7] He was an active member of the South Australian Literary Societies' Union; his claim to have first mooted that body's Union Parliament,[8] was refuted by George Hussey.[9]
Ponder was first elected to office in 1898 with his election as a City of Adelaide councillor for Young Ward, having been defeated in an attempt for that seat the previous year and in a bid for the Legislative Council in 1901.[10] He was a councillor for six years, but ran for alderman and lost in 1904.[11][6] Ponder was elected to the House of Assembly as a Labor member at the 1905 state election, and in 1915 was reported to have only ever missed one sitting.[2][6] He was a state MP for sixteen years, being re-elected numerous times.[12] He was expelled from the Labor Party in the 1917 Labor split over his support for conscription, joined the splinter National Party, and was re-elected in 1918 under that banner.[13][14] However, following the collapse of the National Party's coalition with the conservative Liberal Union, he was defeated in 1921 for the short-lived Progressive Country Party alliance.[15]
He died at "Wilcot", his home in Gilberton, in 1933. He had been in good health until a short time before his death, but suffered two heart attacks in short succession. He was buried at West Terrace Cemetery.[2][3][16]
^ abc"Ms. W. D. Ponder". The Mail (Adelaide). Vol. 3, no. 149. South Australia. 20 March 1915. p. 6 (Saturday's News Section). Retrieved 24 March 2016 – via Trove.