Nick Harvey was born Nicholas Stuart Harvey on August 17, 1955, in Gosford, New South Wales, Australia, to a father of French pastry cook and baker descent, who had traveled to Australia to work in the Gold mines at Hill End, NSW. His mother was born on a sheep property at Hill End.
At the tender age of three, Nick's parents separated, and he was sent to live with his grandparents on the same farm where his mother was born, which would later shape his love for nature, hunting, and fishing. Both his grandparents were musically inclined, and they would often sing and play piano, ukulele, and fiddle.
As the era before television was marked by limited battery life for wireless sets, Nick spent his evenings reading, singing, and attempting to learn guitar. Every week, the family would gather around the wireless to listen to the Country music hour, which featured both Australian and US artists.
Nick attended various primary schools before enrolling in Echuca Technical College in Victoria, where his mother had remarried. However, at the age of 14 and a half, he had had enough of school, where he was frequently mugged for his lunch money and other valuables, so he decided to run away and find work as a roustabout in the sheep shearing sheds. He also added boxing, drinking, and chasing women to his resume.
A run-in with the law over a fight led to a stint in the Australian Army and a tour of Vietnam. Following his military service, Nick moved to London, where he claimed to have "put on the greatest act and told the biggest lies ever told" to gain admission to RADA.
