Rosemary grew up the fifth in a family of six children in the 1950s and '60s. Her family lived in Glenroy, an outer northern suburb of Melbourne, Australia, where historical old homes were scattered amongst new housing developments full of young families and war refugees. She studied children's literature in a post-graduate librarianship course and worked as a children's librarian for many years, usually in public libraries. As a child she loved reading books with a bit of magic in them, like her mother's battered old copy of Coppertop by Australian author Harold Gaze, or the E. Nesbit fantasies her father would bring home from the state library in the city. She has never lost that love and, after attending classes on writing for children run by children's author Rachel Flynn, she now enjoys creating her own magical stories.