[1] He was the son of Mary Ann (née McCullagh) and David John O'Keefe, his father being a farmer.

He moved to Beaconsfield at the age of 17 and worked as a gold miner for four years, operating the stamp battery used to process the results of quartz reef mining.

[1] After resigning from the Herald in 1899 he moved to Queensland and reported for Melbourne's Argus on the copper fields at Chillagoe and Mount Garnet.

[4] In 1922, he was elected to the House of Representatives, defeating Labor-turned-Nationalist MP William Laird Smith for the seat of Denison.

[citation needed] He was defeated in 1925 by Nationalist Sir John Gellibrand and worked in Western Australia for some time before returning to Tasmania in 1931.