Geoff Wyatt quit high school at fourteen and joined the Royal Australian Navy at seventeen. After serving for several years, he worked as a labourer and factory worker before becoming a journalist. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he published stories and articles in magazines such as Chance, Squire, Man, Tabloid Story and Australian Letters. He worked on The Tidal Forest (1974) for a number of years while writing 'pot-boilers' for Horwitz.