Born in Gillingham, Kent, Abbie was educated at a mathematical school in Rochester where he obtained a scholarship which enabled him to graduate from the University of London in 1922.
Soon after the family immigrated in Australia, where he enrolled in medicine at Sydney University, obtaining a master's degree in 1929.
He became medical officer at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital a year later, and then won a scholarship that permitted him to return to England and pursue a doctorate in anatomy at University College, London (1934).
He left the army in 1944, to take up the Elder chair of anatomy and histology at the University of Adelaide in December, and quickly rose to be dean of the faculty.
Abbie had always been interested in ethnography, an interest reflected professionally in his being twice (1948 and 1959) appointed president of the Anthropological Society of South Australia, and in leading expeditions from 1951 to 1969 across South Australian and the Northern Territory make anthropometricala and social studies of the indigenous peoples.