Valdemar Robert Wake was born on 11 April 1935 at Sydney, son of Robert Frederick Bird Wake from his first marriage. The family moved to Brisbane in May 1935. In 1937 Alexander Andrew Pooley Wake was born in Brisbane to Robert and Elizabeth (nee Burns) Wake. After the war the family moved back to Sydney where Bob Wake become a founding director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) .

In 1956 Val married Lillian Louis Lequereux, a nurse from Canada.

Val Wake started his working life as a copy boy on the 'Sydney Daily Telegraph'. During 40 years as a journalist he was a play reviewer for 'Plays and Players' of London, an editor of Canadian biweekly the 'Dawson Creek Star', a producer for the nightly newsreel on ABC Television News, Sydney, and the Arctic editor for CBC Northern Service. While working in Arctic Canada Val Wake was closely associated with reporting the development of the native rights movement across the north. He also made a side trip to the North Pole. For the last 20 years before retiring Val Wake worked for the British Government as an information officer. From 1991 to 1995 he was head of the Central Office of Information Radio Division, working with Foreign Office supplying programme services in support of the British Government's overseas objectives. He and his Canadian-born wife Lillian retired to Port Macquarie in 1996 where he has done freelance work, writing yachting stories and pieces for 'AQ', the journal of the Australian Institute of Political Science. His father, Robert Frederick Bird Wake was head of Commonwealth security in Queensland during the 1930s-1950s and his godfather Valdemar Augenson who was responsible for finding aerodrome sites in Queensland during the 1920s-1930s --adapted from AustLit.