Daughter of an English clergyman, Nora was the eldest of four children. When her father was diagnosed as having tuberculosis he emigrated to Tasmania (1896). Nora was educated at the Collegiate School, Hobart, and was a student teacher there 1900-1902. When her family moved to Mt Gambier she stayed in Victoria. Her teaching career took her to Warwick House, East Malvern (1904-1905), Girton College, Bendigo (1906), St Andrew's, Middle Brighton (1907), Firbank (1909) and Merton Hall (1912-1914).
She moved to Queensland where she experienced 'a profound religious conviction' (A. D. Pyke, The Gold and the Blue : A History of Lowther Hall, 1983) which affected the rest of her life. She joined the Sisterhood of the Holy Advent, taking the name Sister Teresa, and taught at St Margaret's, Albion, becoming principal in 1918. She resigned in 1927 and returned to South Australia, where she worked for the church and wrote historical and church pageants, but she maintained certain aspects of her religious life - a wedding ring symbolising her marriage to the church, and simple, coarse-fabric undergarments.
In 1929 she became a broadcaster, writer and publicist for the League of Nations, and in 1933 she produced (with Kenneth Duffield) a 'Pageant of Nations' in the Melbourne Town Hall. In 1934 she was invited to be principal of Lowther Hall in Essendon, Victoria, an Anglican school which had been going through difficult times. She built up the school, constructing a chapel and making this the focus of the school life. She fostered the establishment of Lowther Hall as a community centre for education. In 1945, in deteriorating health, she gave up the school and returned to Adelaide where she lived for several years before returning to England. She died in 1963 from the combined effects of cerebral thrombosis and Parkinson's disease.
