Early Years
"Bob" Heffron (as he was widely known) was born in Thames, New Zealand and left school at 15 to work in a gold-treating plant while studying metallurgy at the Thames School of Mines. At 19, he went to California to work and to Yukon look unsuccessfully for gold and he returned to New Zealand in 1912. He joined the New Zealand Socialist Party in 1913 and became a union organiser. He married Jessie Bjornstad in 1917 and they travelled to Melbourne to avoid military service. He moved to Sydney in 1921 as secretary of the New South Wales branch of the Federated Marine Stewards' and Pantrymen's Association of Australasia.
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