He attended Westbourne Park Primary School for a short time, then Prince Alfred College, where at age eight he began art classes under James Ashton, the drawing master.

[3] Early in 1929, encouraged and supported by his tutor at SASAC Marie Tuck (1866–1947), and his old teacher James Ashton who described him in a newspaper article as a “genius” and “one of the best artists produced by South Australia” the young Ivor Hele, aged just sixteen years, travelled to Europe.

[15] It would be his home for the rest of his life – more than fifty years In 1936 his painting The Proclamation won first prize in a competition to mark the Centenary of South Australia.

[16] In 1938 a major work, Sturt's Reluctant Decision to Return won the Commonwealth sesquicentenary prize of 250 guineas[17] (perhaps AUD 20,000 in today's[when?]

Encouraged by Thomas Blamey, who had been impressed by the Sturt painting and with a promise of support for his artistic career, Hele enlisted as a private soldier in the 2nd AIF and in June 1940 sailed for the Middle East with the 2/48th Battalion, 9th Australian Division.

On 9 January 1941 Blamey met him personally; he was promoted to lieutenant with responsibilities as a war artist, given a truck and batman-driver and instructed to join the 6th Division in its push to Tobruk.

Around June 1941 he joined the Military History and Information Section of the AIF, under J. L. Treloar, which had a studio in Heliopolis, which he shared with Lyndon Dadswell and John Dowie.

[22] He taught life drawing to many well-known Australian artists including Jacqueline Hick, Jeffrey Smart, David Dallwitz, Marjorie Hann, Hugo Shaw, and Geoff Wilson.

On 24 March 1932, Hele married Millicent Mary Jean Berry, a school teacher, at the Manse, Germein Street, Semaphore, South Australia.