The daughter of a New South Wales north-coast timber-getter, Walter Robert Fawcett and Martha Mackay-Fawcett, Walda L. Scholler was born in Sydney in 1940.
   Educated at St. Augustine's Convent in Coffs Harbour, she left school to work for an Accountancy firm and later went to Sydney to live.
   From there Walda worked in New Guinea, returning to Australia in 1961 where she married.
   In the early 1970s, with her husband, Erich, and their two children, the family travelled extensively throughout Australia before settling down on the Anakie Sapphire Fields in Queensland where they built, owned and operated a Tourist Business in Anakie from 1979 to 1997 which, for ten years, incorporated the Anakie Post Office (1979-1989).
   Walda wrote information sheets for the Sapphire Fields and many articles for tourist magazines. During the 1980s she studied creative writing through the James Cook University, Townsville.
   Walda has also written two history books on the Anakie Sapphire Fields. Anakie - The Sapphire Fields of Central Queensland (1985) and Images of the Anakie Sapphire Fields (1993). In 1985 she was book officer for the Anakie State School centenary celebrations (1885-1985), that history being printed by the School as a Centenary project. In 1987, she co-authored a short history of her mother's Scottish family which was a prelude to the McKay/Mckay family reunion held at Macksville (NSW) in1988.
   In 1997 the business sold and Walda and Erich went into semi-retirement.
   Stone Country is Walda's first novel. She is currently working on the sequel.