Dulcie Deamer was born at Christchurch, New Zealand, and was educated at home. Appearing on stage at an early age, she took elocution and ballet lessons as further stage-training. In 1906 she won a Lone Hand short story competition and the next year joined a touring theatrical company. In 1907, at Saint Mary's Cathedral in Perth, she married Albert Goldie (q.v.), a member of the company, before embarking on a tour of the far east.
Returning to Sydney in 1908 she pursued a career as a writer, actor and bohemian. In the next decade she bore six children and travelled overseas frequently, ultimately leaving the children in the care of her mother who had moved to Sydney.
After leaving her husband in 1922, she lived at Kings Cross and worked as a freelance journalist. A well-known figure in Kings Cross, she was crowned 'Queen of Bohemia' in 1925. In the 1930s, as a columnist in the Australian Woman's Mirror writing wittily about male/female relationships, she also wrote several well-reviewed plays. By this time she had written several 'pot-boiler' novels that were syndicated in Randolph Hearst's newspapers in the United States of America. She added to this work with two volumes of mystical poetry, the last published in 1948.
Deamer began to write her autobiography in the 1960s, but failed to find a publisher. After spending several years in the Little Sisters of the Poor home at Randwick, she died in 1972. Her autobiography was edited by Peter Kirkpatrick and published in 1998.
