Mary Lang spent her childhood on the Monaro, New South Wales, and at boarding school in Sydney. She completed her schooling in London, and when she was seventeen, her first book of poetry was published there. A few years later, she sailed around Cape Horn in one of the last commercial square-rigged ships before returning to Sydney where she lived for the next fifteen years. Lang returned to the Monaro where she owned and operated a beef cattle stud and for many years lived near Sutton, New South Wales.
