Daughter of Henry McConville, licensed victualler, of Robe, and his wife Bridget, Joy was the youngest of five girls. Her mother died when she was a baby. For her education she boarded at the Mt Barker Convent, SA, 1916-23, and she later trained as a nurse. In 1933 she was enrolled as a Member of the Royal British Nurses' Association, and was registered as a general Nurse in Vic in 1940.
During WWII she served in the late 2nd/14th Australian Hospital and the 2nd AIF in the South Pacific, and it was during the war that she met John Anthony Melano. In 1945 they were married at St John's Church, East Melbourne. She was President of the Heywood Red Cross in 1952. When they moved to Millicent some time after 1955 she became a member of the Millicent Choral Society, and participated in the Company of Seven (local drama group). Her father, at the age of 78, ran an ABC show, "Around the campfire", and Joy used many of his bush anecdotes for articles for People magazine in the 1960s. She took a number of writing courses by correspondence - journalism, short story writing, and radio script-writing. She won the Geraldton (WA) Cultural Trust Literary Award in Oct, 1986 for her article "A Gold Field Adventure". As well as her writing listed below she compiled the Millicent Centenary Souvenir, 100 Years of Progress 1870-1970 (1971?) and wrote a history of Millicent, Walking Tall (1973).
