Jurgis Janavicius completed high school in Lithuania, studied economics in Freiburg for two years and arts in Sydney for two years. He gained his technical education in field hydrography and was engaged in hydrographic reconnaissance in Australia and on the Purari, Vailala and Strickland rivers in Papua and New Guinea.
His poetry has been read on Radio 2XX in 1976 and he has read at the Art Gallery of New South Wales for the Sydney Biennale, 1982. Also a cartoonist, he has published some of his cartoons in various journals. Janavicius edited Poetry and Prose Broadsheet from 1969 to 1973. He also edited and published a Lithuanian text, the letters of Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas to his sister Magdalena Slavenas and her family in Australia, 1957-1967.