Allison migrated to Australia from Dundee in 1966, giving up a scholarship with the Dundee School of Art to do so. She qualified as one of the first women draughtspeople in SA. Her interests were art, dressage, jazz and gardening, and quite late in her life, writing. She first attended Friendly Street Poets in late 1994, and submitted her first poems for selection for the annual anthology in 1995. She died in 1998 after a 5 year battle with cancer and is survived by her son Doug and her partner David Cookson.