[1][2] The son of a primary school headmaster,[3] Fred Alexander was born in Victoria on 12 April 1899.
[1] He attended Melbourne High School, and in 1916 won an exhibition to attend lectures at Trinity College[4] during his studies at the University of Melbourne, where he intended to gain a Bachelor of Laws degree.
[2][3] During his second year at Balliol, he suffered from a recurrent illness, and in 1923 he was advised by his doctors to take a long sea voyage.
That year, he sailed for Melbourne; when his ship docked at Fremantle, Western Australia, he took the opportunity to visit Edward Shann, the foundation professor of History and Economics at the University of Western Australia.
[5] In 1949–50, he spent four months in South Africa as a Carnegie Fellow, an experience which caused him to concentrate on Commonwealth history.