AustLit

Daughter of Walter Murdoch (q.v.), Catherine King studied at the University of Western Australia (she was a sub-editor of The Black Swan in 1925) and later undertook a Diploma of Education at the University of London. In 1942 she lectured at Perth's Kindergarten College and in 1943 started her own kindergarten. In 1939 she began a series of parent education broadcasts on the ABC, and in 1943, a Kindergarten of the Air. In 1944 she revived the ABC Women's Session, which had run in the 1930s but been discontinued as a war economy. She ran this very popular program for nearly twenty years until her husband Alec King (qv) was appointed to a chair in Monash University in 1965 .

King started the Western Australian branch of Save the Children in 1947 and continued her active support of the program in Melbourne. She received an honorary doctorate from Murdoch University, which was named after her father, and in 1966 she was awarded an MBE for services to the community. She was the mother of Francis King.

King returned to live in Perth in 1976, dying there at the age of 96.