Ray Tyndale grew up and was educated in Surrey, England. She went to grammar school in a building that had been in continuous use since the Norman Conquest, which instilled in her, she says, a great sense of history. She was an economist at H. M. Treasury, Whitehall, before marrying in the sixties and having three children. They migrated to Adelaide in 1970, and farmed in the Adelaide Hills until the Ash Wednesday fires. After this they spent a short period in Burra.
Tyndale did her second degree as a mature age student, then worked as a psychotherapist, working mainly with women, before turning to writing full-time. She enjoys being a grandmother, and travelling, gardening, woodwork etc. She has had six short stories and ten poems read on Writers' Radio and/or State of the Arts. .