As a child Judith Worthy lived in the Swan Valley, Western Australia, where she attended Guildford State School; later she went to Perth College. She has been a full-time writer since 1976. Her first short story was published in the Australian Woman's Mirror in 1961 and some children's stories appeared on television in Western Australia, illustrated by Rolf Harris (q.v.). In 1960 Worthy went to England, living and working in London for ten years where she held a variety of jobs, mostly in the fields of advertising and public relations and the British government's Information Office (Exhibitions Section). She also published magazine short stories (children's and romance) and book reviews until 1969 when her first romance novel was published by Mills and Boon. She returned to Australia in 1971.
Worthy has also contributed to reading schemes, such as Rigby's 'Reading Rigby' series (for example, Barney, Boofer and the Cricket Bat, 1980, and Old Joe, 1981). After travelling around Australia in 1979, she and her husband Frank Worthy wrote Bussing Around Australia (1981). They lived in Melbourne until 2006, when they moved to the Sunshine Coast, Queensland.
