He was the son of Elizabeth Agnes (née Braidwood) and William Clifford Melbourne; his father was a printer and trade union official.

[1] In 1913, Melbourne moved to Brisbane and joined the University of Queensland's history and economics department as a temporary assistant lecturer.

[1] The paper he presented was titled "Methods of Historical Research" and has been described as "probably the first time a professional historian spoke and wrote about historiography in Queensland".

[1] In 1925 he began writing Queensland History, a serialised column published in the Daily Mail and intended for publication as a book, which never eventuated.

He subsequently contributed two chapters to volume seven of Newton's Cambridge History of the British Empire (1933) and published Early Constitutional Development in Australia (1934).

[1] His sudden death was described by the university's chancellor James William Blair as a "great loss to our educational progress".