AustLit

Rooke was born in Boksburg, Transvaal, South Africa, of an English father and Afrikaans mother. Her mother, Marie Knevitt, was a writer, as was her uncle, Leon Mare. She grew up in Durban, and later moved to Zululand, where her first novel, A Grove of Fever Trees (1950; originally published as The Sea Hath Bounds in 1946), was set. During the 1930s she worked as a journalist in South Africa. In 1937 she married the Australian, Irvin Rooke, and eventually settled in Australia with him. After the death of her husband in the 1980s, she moved to Cambridge, England, in 1991, to be near her daughter and grandchildren.

Rooke wrote several novels as well as children's books. One of her novels, Apples in the Hold (1950), was written under the pseudonym Robert Pointon. Only her works with Australian content or written while she lived in Australia are listed on AustLit.