Kathleen McArthur, botanical illustrator and conservationist, was born Kathleen Evans in Brisbane in 1915. In 1938 she married Malcolm McArthur, with whom she travelled to India and around Australia. They were divorced in 1947. From 1953, Kathleen began a major project documenting the wildflowers growing in her local area around Caloundra and the Sunshine Coast more generally. In 1962 she co-founded with her friend the poet Judith Wright the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland (WPSQ) and was the driving force behind the Cooloola Campaign which saved areas of the Sunshine Coast from sand mining.