Rosemary Opala (nee Fielding) was born on 24 January 1923 at Bundaberg, Queensland in 1923. In the 1940s she studied art at the George Street Technical College (later Queensland University of Technology). She trained as a nurse at Brisbane General Hospital during World War II, worked at the Peel Island Lazaret in the late 1940s. At this time she began drawing cartoons about nursing, having abandoned a commercial art course in order 'to do something useful’. Many were published in Trephine (Brisbane). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, she wrote popular magazine fiction and in later years wrote non-fiction, with an emphasis on Queensland and its history. After working at Peel Island in the 1960s, Rosemary and her husband Marian moved to Redland Bay and later to Coochiemudlo Island where they built a house near Main Beach. They never had children. The couple left the island in the late 1960s and Rosemary continued her career as a nurse. She received her diploma in Nursing administration in 1977 and worked at Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane. Marian Opala died on 12 June 1989. Retiring in 1989 she remained at Victoria Point. She died on 26 January 2008.