Alfred Greenwood Hales (1860-1936), known as 'Smiler' Hales, was an Australian novelist and war correspondent. This is part of an article about Hales in an Australian newspaper, just after he died:

Mr Hales lived dangerously. He was in every important rush which took place in the last decade of the nineteenth century - Broken Hill, Coolgardie, Kimberley, North Queensland and some others. He followed the wars, fighting or acting as war correspondent in South Africa, the Russo-Japanese War, wars in the Balkans, and the Great War. He was daring and carefree, a fine horseman, a strong and ready boxer, and participant in all sports requiring athleticism. Hales was a vigorous and imaginative writer, whose pen was often as good humoured and reckless as he himself. His novels, which commanded wide reading, were virile but not as much as his contributions to the daily papers. His letters from South Africa to the Daily Mail during the Boer War caused a sensation. They were read with avidity everywhere. Hales found dramatic, tragic, sentimental and picturesque material where to others there was hardly more than a blank.