Thurley Fowler grew up on a Murrumbidgee irrigation area farm similar to that described in her children's book The Green Wind which won the 1986 Australian Book of the Year Award. She had her first story, The Water Melon, published in the Sydney Sun which she wrote while still at school.
Her writing was interrupted when she moved from Griffith to Melbourne, married, began her family and subsequently became a Cub Master for fifteen years. Her enjoyment of her work with the cubs both inspired some of her children's book characters and gave her a heightened awareness of the need to respect the diversity of reader perspective through her writing.