Nancy was educated at St Margaret's School for Girls, Victoria. On several occasions she visited SA to stay with the Sprods at the Grange, and it was here, when she was sixteen, that she met John Duncan Gordon. When war broke out John enlisted, and when he returned from service in PNG in 1943 he and Nancy got engaged. They were married in March 1944.
John was posted to Beenleigh (Qld) as an instructor. Nancy was able to go with him, and when he was transferred to the Staff College near Toowoomba for two or three months, she lived in Toowoomba with the other wives. They moved to SA in Dec 1945, living first at Henley Beach and then at Lockleys before building one of the first houses at the then new suburb of Skye.
In 1973 they took up sharefarming at Moorook, on the Murray, keeping just a small cottage at Norwood. Nancy rang the seasons at Moorook in a series of essays in Issue, 1975.
Nancy began writing in the late 1950s, when her two sons were growing up, and gave radio broadcast talks on the ABC in the 1950s and 1960s. She later talked on 5UV and 5MMM. Over the years she tutored in WEA classes and Colleges of Advanced Education. From 1975 - 1976 she organized the Adelaide Poetry Group workshop conducted by John Griffin, Christine Churches and Graham Rowlands at Edmund Wright House. Realizing the need for continued readings between Festivals of Arts Writers' Weeks, she managed to get grants from the SA government to organize a series of poetry and music evenings at Edmund Wright House, Ayers House and the Festival Centre, and she was one of the founders of the Friendly Street poetry performance venue.
Nancy was a keen birdwatcher, and she enjoyed travelling. She died of cancer in 1988.
