Coates was born in Mount Pleasant, a suburb of Ballarat, Victoria in 1895 in Australia. Aged 11 years, he left school and went to work as a butcher and an apprentice bookbinder.
Coates was born in Mount Pleasant, a suburb of Ballarat, Victoria in 1895 in Australia. At the age of eleven, he left education to work as a butcher and an apprentice bookbinder.