[1] Simpson moved with his mother to live in the small New South Wales gold mining town of Hill End, where he would spend most of his childhood.

[1][4] In 1931 his long poem "Infidelities" was published in Trio, a "slim but elegant"[1] book of poetry to which the poets Kenneth Slessor and Harley Matthews also contributed.

[1] In 1941 he and Tess van Sommers[5][6] were responsible for an article in The Sun's "Fact" supplement exposing the Ern Malley literary hoax.

While there he conducted interviews with celebrities including John L. Lewis, Claire Booth Luce, Billy Rose, Frank Sinatra and Henry Wallace.

He travelled to all parts of Australia, to the nearby islands of the South Pacific and to Borneo, gathering materials and writing radio documentaries mostly for the ABC's Australian Walkabout programme.

[2] For a 1948 documentary he visited British North Borneo, retracing the trail of the Sandakan-Ranou death marches during the Second World War and later recording the memories of six survivors.

In 1938 Simpson married Estelle Maud "Claire" Waterman, a graphic artist who would during his career contribute illustrations to his published books.