'Helga Maria Griffin (née Girschik) was born in Turkey in 1935. In 1956, she married an Australian in Rome. She subsequently raised six children in Australia and Papua New Guinea. She taught in further education, and from 1979–98 was on the staff of the Australian Dictionary of Biography project. With Anthony Regan, she edited the comprehensive study Bougainville Before the Conflict(Pandanus Books, 2005).