[1] Macartney attended Alfred Crescent State School until he was twelve, after which he held various jobs as a shop-assistant, before working as a bookkeeper on a Riverina station in 1910–12.

[1] In 1921 Macartney went to Darwin as an assistant to the administrator of the Northern Territory, Frederic Charles Urquhart, and to the government secretary.

Appointed public trustee in 1922, by 1924 he was the 'legal Pooh-Bah' of the Territory: sheriff, clerk of courts and judge's associate, registrar of companies, bankruptcy, and births, deaths and marriages, and returning officer.

[1] In 1929, Macartney wrote A Sweep of Lute-strings, Being the Title Excusing a Very Few Love-rhymes.

In 1961, Selected Poems of Frederick T. Macartney was published by the Commonwealth Literary Fund.