He was the maternal grandson of Caroline Chisholm, the English humanitarian renowned for her social welfare work with female immigrants to Australia.

He was educated at the Benedictine monastery at Fort Augustus, Scotland, and at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit school in County Kildare.

Despite his family's support for Parnell, Gray altered the Journal's policy to compete with an anti-Parnell paper, causing some controversy and contributing to his decision to migrate to Australia permanently.

[1] After some travel in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji where he was involved with some mining ventures, Gray spent ten years working as a farmer in New Norfolk, but by 1912 was in Hobart editing the Daily Post, an Australian Labor Party newspaper.

He had visited New Zealand, which he saw as an ideal model and precedent for Tasmania's economy and society—a "worker's paradise" as he referred to it—should the Douglasite concept of national credit be adopted.