Of English, Scottish, French and pioneer Australian descent, Valerie was the fourth child of the family. She attended St Peter's Collegiate Girls' School for ten years, and says today that she is glad she attended a single sex school. The only male teacher at the school at the time was the Chaplain, who taught Divinity. It was during his lessons that she did her Latin homework. She says of her childhood, "As a small child, I loved rhymes, stories, songs, singing, laughter. I delighted in the use of big words. My happiest birthdays were those on which I received several books, and read them all in a day. Later, I read just as greedily, but more widely. Reading reinforced my taste for travel and adventure, especially for the taste of mental adventure. I came early to love poetry and music: they have remained my life-support system." (After the Rage, p 148).
Her teachers persuaded her father to let her go to the university. She studied Arts at the University of Adelaide for two years. Her first year English Professor was Charles Jury, the poet and playwright. She won the Tormore Essay Prize that year. In her second year Dr Brian Elliott lectured on Chaucer (one of her favourites) and on Australian poetry. Until then, she had not been aware that there was any Australian poetry. She topped English that year. She also studied Education, with Dr H H Penny as lecturer. She says of this time, "My two years at University were the richest and most seminal of my life. I had wonderful teachers, and doors were opened for me then which have never closed." She left her studies in 1950 to get married. "The choice between University and marriage was a hard one, but it was either/or in those days, and I am still married, 47 years later" (personal communication, 1997).
She and her husband share a life-long love of music, especially organ and choral music, and a marriage-long interest in politics. They have two sons. Valerie Coombe is very interested in the life and literature of the Ancient World, particularly Sophoclean tragedy. She has travelled in the Pacific, SE Asia and Europe. She ran a company from her own home for 25-30 years, and has been a student of a number of courses over the years. She was anthologized in the first Friendly Street Reader, and has read at Scott Theatre, Ayer's House, Edmund Wright House, The Space, Friendly Street and on Writer's Radio (5UV). Lines from her "In Praise of Reticence" were read on ABC's PoeticA on 5 June 1999. The Arts are very important to her. "A country's Arts and Humanities are its blood and guts - its riches", she says.
