Daughter of Arthur Walker and his wife Frances (Sinclair), Ellinor Walker was born in Melbourne and moved to Adelaide when she was nine years old. She attended the Wilderness School, and was awarded the Tennyson Medal for English at the age of fifteen. She graduated as a kindergarten teacher, and spent two years as Director of the Halifax St Free Kindergarten. She then opened the Greenways School, on Montessori principles, at her family home in Fullarton, and directed this for 24 years.
At the age of eighteen she and a friend formed a Girls' Club to study political matters, and at the age of 21 she joined the Non-Party Association. She was an active member of this for 65 years, and when it voluntarily ended in 1979 (as the League of Women Voters), she gave the valedictory speech.
She was active also in the promotion of women's role in social and economic affairs, and in 1940 she and Roma Mitchell (later Governor of SA) drew up the Bill which became the Guardianship of Infants Act, No. 55 (1940), giving mothers equal rights with fathers over their children. In 1962 and 1963 she organised an Australia-wide campaign which resulted in recognition of the needs of civilian widows with dependent children. She was a member of the WCTU. In 1964 she helped form the Local Government Women's Association, and was a member at at one time president of the Women's Christian Temperance League. She was a passionate supporter of the League of Nations and the movement to maintain world peace.
Walker wrote several historical pageants and songs, and she also wrote a monologue, 'The Story of the Franchise: How Women Won the Vote in SA' (1944) for the Golden Jubilee of Women's Suffrage.
Ellinor Walker was awarded the OBE in 1971.
