Born in the mallee of Victoria, a "baby boomer", Robin maintains an abiding love for arid landscape. She grew up from seven years old in Melbourne suburbs. She has a BSc in biology from Monash University. Active in the early 1970s environmental, women's liberation and anti-war movements, she also started writing poetry during this time. From 1974-76 she was on the founding collective of Melbourne's first women's refuge.
In 1976 she moved to Adelaide and did a Master's degree in Business Administration while being, as she describes herself, "an active anarcha-feminist and radicalesbian". She has been on organizing collectives for women's liberation conferences from 1976 (Melbourne) to 1995 (Adelaide), including the first Australian National Lesbian Conference (Adelaide, 1989). From 1985-1995 she lived half of each year in Central Australia, including a year as a community centre co-ordinator at Yulara (Ayers Rock Resort) where she learnt some of the Pitjantjatjara language. She has now settled back onto women's land in the Barossa which she helped initiate in 1980.
She teaches creative writing at a local community centre and helps to organize local women's performing events. She has read her own work on a number of public occasions. She also works part-time at a rural TAFE College, teaching women's studies, literacy, numeracy and computer literacy. The women's community in which she lives with a group of lesbians has been involved in small-scale dairy and poultry production, has reared two girl children, and does tree-planting and engages in women's spirituality and culture.
