Jack Charles was born on 5 September 1943 at the Royal Women's Hospital, Carlton, in Melbourne, Victoria,[1][2] to a Bunurong mother, Blanche,[3] who was 15 years old at the time,[2] and a Wiradjuri father, Hilton. Charles' great-great-grandfather was a Djadjawurrung man, among the activists who resisted government policy at the Coranderrk reserve in Victoria in 1881.[4]