Colleen Hewett was born on 16 April 1950 in Bendigo. She has an older sister, Glenys Hewett, who was a pop vocalist from the early sixties to mid-seventies. Hewett began her music career at the age of 12 when she sang with The Esquires at the Bendigo YMCA. At about 13 years old she appeared on TV pop music series, "The Go!! Show", fifty years later she recalled "I wasn't of an age at that stage where I could go out on tour with anybody [...] I came down from Bendigo with a band I was working with there [...] then I came down again around my 14th birthday and did a solo spot on it ... they were just cover versions. I was just a little singer from Bendigo who came down on the train with the boys and did this amazing show that everybody watched".