Born in Leeton, New South Wales, Australia, at the height  of the Great Depression, my early childhood memories are of camping out in the bush, meals cooked on a campfire, and travelling about in an old motor car.  Mum and Dad separated when I was seven, and the rest of my growing up was done in boarding schools.

I graduated from Wollongong High School with the Intermediate Certificate,  and worked in a photographer's studio until my marriage, at age nineteen, in 1953.
Blessed with four sons.