Frank Hardy - Early Life

Early Life

Frank Hardy, the fifth of the eight children of Thomas and Winifred Hardy, was born on 21 March 1917 at Southern Cross in western Victoria and later moved with his family to Bacchus Marsh, west of Melbourne. His mother, Winifred, was a Roman Catholic – his father, Thomas, an atheist of Welsh and English descent. In 1931 Hardy left school, aged 14, and embarked upon a series of manual jobs. According to Hardy biographer Pauline Armstrong, "his first job was as a messenger and bottlewasher at the local chemist's shop" and then Hardy worked at the local grocer. He later also did manual work "in and around Bacchus Marsh in the milk factory, digging potatoes, picking tomatoes and fruit".

There is some debate among Hardy's biographers about the relative extent Hardy personally suffered from hardships during the 1930s depression. Hardy claimed himself that he left home when he was 13 because "his dad couldn't get the dole" with him at home. However, Jim Hardy, Frank's eldest brother, wrote to the Melbourne Herald on 6 November 1983 to rebut this assertion, claiming that Frank had never had to leave home – further noting that their "father never lost a day's work in his life". According to biographer Jenny Hocking in a more recent biography, Tom Hardy indeed did lose his job at a milk factory at the start of the Great Depression, and the family had had to move into a small rented house in Lerderderg Street.

In 1937 Radio Times published a selection of his cartoons.