[2] Kaeppel was educated at Sydney Grammar School of which he was captain in 1905, and at Sydney University, where he graduated BA with first-class honours in Classics in 1910,[3] having won the Salting exhibition, Cooper scholarship, and Cooper travelling scholarship,[4] which entitled him to go to Oxford, but illness prevented him from taking up the opportunity[5] but was able to undertake a long tour of Europe, studying languages.
[6] He worked at the British Museum on early geographic texts, and did a course in anthropology at London University under Professor Seligman.
[8] He returned to Australia, where by 1922[9] he had been appointed senior classics master at Melbourne Grammar School by headmaster R. P. Franklin, a close friend (they had taught together at "Shore") but in 1931 was forced to leave on account of his heavy drinking.
[11] He was a voracious reader, and not only retained all he read but could cross-reference that information and draw inferences and reach surprising conclusions from the mass of mental data.
[16] An habitué of the Savage and Naval and Military clubs, he was a hard drinker,[1] generous to a fault, completely devoid of worldly ambition and died virtually penniless and (perhaps hastened from being gassed during the War) before his time.