WJ Dawkins was a founding member of the Australian Poll Dorset Association which was established on September 28th 1954.
The inaugural meeting was held during the Melbourne Royal Show when WJ Dawkins, Jack Reddin (Newbold studmaster), L. A. Stuart of Valma, Whitemore, Tasmania and R. H. Wilson of Kismet, Howlong, NSW met and decided to form an organisation to record the breeding of Poll Dorset sheep in Australia.
While WJ Dawkins had been experimenting in the breeding of Poll Dorset Sheep since 1937, fellow breeders L. A. Stuart and R. H. Wilson had also started experimenting in the 1940s.
By 1954, after years of careful selection and ruthless and costly culling, the three breeders felt that they had produced Poll Dorsets of sufficient Dorset Horn quality to establish the Poll Dorset breed of sheep.