Talbot was born on 23 August 1933 as the second of six children in the New South Wales township of Barnsley near Newcastle. His parents were both of English descent; his father, Arthur Talbot, was from a family of coal miners from Yorkshire, and started work on the mines in Newcastle when he arrived with his brothers and sisters in Australia in 1914. His mother, Elsie Francis Channel, emigrated from England to Australia in 1909. When Talbot was three his father had a mining accident that ended his career, and subsequently moved the family to the Sydney suburb of Bankstown. He began working in a garage adjoining the family home, and worked as a toolmaker in the Sydney CBD during World War II.