Gye's artwork was published in a number of newspapers and magazines including The Bulletin, a journal with which he had a long association both as an artist and a writer.

[2][A] Later in 1888 Walter Gye took his family to the Black Range goldfield to the north of Albury near the Victorian border where he took up land and prospected for gold.

Gye was an avid reader of books on drawing and joined an art class conducted by Alek Sass.

He became a member of the Melbourne bohemian group which met at the Mitre Hotel in Bank Place and Fasoli's Cafe in Lonsdale Street.

[3][5] While he was employed as a law clerk, Gye began to have his artistic and literary work published, including a political cartoon accepted for publication by The Bulletin, featuring the Australian prime minister George Reid.

[10] In March 1908 it was reported that Hal Gye had abandoned his career as a law clerk pursuing legal studies in favour of drawing and writing professionally.

[11] His first acceptance as a freelance artist was a drawing he sold for two shillings and sixpence to Melbourne's weekly Table Talk magazine.

In addition to his caricatures and cartoons he had verse published in The Bulletin, wrote material for the 'Red Page' and leader-page, reported on boxing matches and contributed "a fair amount of writing" for the 'Poverty Point' section of the magazine.

[6][19] In September 1910 Gye was employed as an artist for The Vanguard, a daily newspaper published by the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party.

[4][2] In 1911 Gye was one of seven artists who contributed illustrations to a publication commemorating an incident in the Second Boer War in February 1900 when members of the Victorian Mounted Rifles were part of a force covering the retreat of the Wiltshire regiment by holding a kopje named Pink Hill, west of Rensburg, against overwhelming odds.

[6][24][3] In 1913 Gye collaborated with the journalist T. M. Hogan in a book about Tasmania titled The Tight Little Island, described as "a panorama of the authors' peregrinations and reflections".

A review of the exhibition commented that Gye "enjoys the somewhat doubtful felicity of being an expert caricaturist" who "handles his pen with a facile and acceptable directness".

[27] After C. J. Dennis had completed the writing of The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, he chose Hal Gye "to do the quaint illustrations" the author had in mind.

[17] The illustrations produced by Gye for The Sentimental Bloke highlight the romantic qualities of the text, portraying the uncultivated 'larrikin' Bill as a whimsical cupid-figure, "complete with chubby thighs and stubbily diaphanous wings".

A full-page cartoon called 'Cupid Up to Date' was published in the Weekly Times Annual, depicting Cupid's courtship and marriage, his war service and eventual wounding and his return to Australia to his wife and newborn son.

[39] In about June 1923 Gye was appointed chief artist on the staff of the daily afternoon Adelaide newspaper, The News.

[17] The broadsheet newspaper had previously been published as The Journal and was renamed after being acquired by James E. Davidson's News Limited company.

[46] An exhibition of coloured monotype prints by Hal Gye opened in late-May 1933 at the Fine Art Society's Gallery in Melbourne.