Judy Foster grew up on an isolated farm on the Murray River during the 1940s. She studied at RMIT Art School with courses in fashion, design and advertising. After teaching for several years at what is now the Monash Caulfield Campus in the 1960s, she set up a primary school art room during the 1970s, followed by qualifying as a Primary Art Teacher. In the 1980s she began writing books for primary school art teachers.

When her daughters attended university, so did Judy. At Monash she completed a Visual Arts Major, as well as courses in Koorie Studies, sociology and Women’s Studies. A chance encounter with the book Language of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas in 1993 inspired her to begin researching the origin and meanings of visual symbolism. It took her on travels around Australia as well as to her ancestral home in Ireland in 1998. In her travels to Britain she visited Stonehenge and Avebury and in Ireland the Newgrange/Knowth Passage. In 1997, she had remet her former Tutor from the Koorie Studies course and they decided to begin work on this book.

Marlene Derlet taught in the Monash Centre for Indigenous Studies from 1989 to 1993. She co-authored, with poet Kristin Henry, Talking Up a Storm (1993). Born in Switzerland, Marlene is a linguist with a background in Anthropology and Sociology.