Early Life
Hal Colebatch was born in Wolferlow in Herefordshire, England, on 29 March 1872. His family migrated to Australia in 1878, settling at Goolwa in South Australia. Colebatch left school in 1883 at the age of 11, because his father could not afford to continue his education. He then found work as an office boy and junior reporter for a local newspaper, the Norwood Free Press. When this paper collapsed, he worked for a series of short-lived papers on the South Australian goldfields. In 1888, he moved to Broken Hill, New South Wales, where he worked for six years as reporter for the Silver Age. There, he reported on a number of strike meetings in 1892, and was subsequently summoned as a Crown witness in the prosecution of some strike leaders.
In 1894, Colebatch migrated to Western Australia to take up a position as reporter on the Coolgardie newspaper Golden Age. After the collapse of the Golden Age the following year, he moved to Kalgoorlie to report on the Kalgoorlie Miner. In 1896, he moved to Perth to join the Morning Herald as mining editor and chess editor. Colebatch was a keen chess player at this time and, in 1898, he won the state title, thereby becoming Western Australia's third chess champion. On 29 April 1896, Colebatch married Mary Maude Saunders in Perth.
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