Kathleen Kinkead Watson was born on 13 January 1911 in Brisbane. She won an open scholarship to University of Queensland to study Arts when it was located in George Street. She joined the Communist Party in 1940 and was politically active in the labour movement from the 1940s. She worked in the trade union movement including for the Union of Australian Women in fighting for equal pay. She married Harvey Alfred Pete Thomas and it is by her married name - Kath Thomas - that she is most remembered. Throughout the 1970s Watson continued preparing submissions to the Federal Government on the role and status of women. She wrote poetry into the 1980s. She died on 3 October 1994.