Audrey Oldfield (Master of Arts) worked as a teacher and a librarian before becoming a fulltime writer and historian. She grew up in the Depression and moved with her father, a butcher, as he sought work in small country towns. Her childhood left a lasting sympathy for Aboriginal children due to the 'apartheid' she observed in rural areas.
Oldfield attended high school in Lismore and Grafton before gaining a teaching qualification at Sydney Teachers College in 1943-1945. She returned to Northern New South Wales to teach before relocating to Caringbah, Sydney in 1949 where she continued to live.
Oldfield worked part-time as a school librarian and engaged in postgraduate studies in Australian history. In the 1970s, she wrote children's fiction. From 1992 onwards, Oldfield wrote exclusively on the history of the women's suffrage movement and republicanism in Australia; her works include Woman Suffrage in Australia: A Gift or a Struggle? (1992) and The Great Republic of the Southern Seas: Republicans in Nineteenth-Century Australia (1999).
(Source: Walter McVitty Authors & Illustrators of Australian Children's Books (1989): 157-158)
