She met her future husband Kenneth Bailey, a Rhodes Scholar from Melbourne, through her brother Vernon Donnison, who was at Corpus Christi College, Oxford with him.
Living in Melbourne in the 1930s and early 1940s, and mother of three sons, Yseult Bailey was active in the Kindergarten Union of Victoria, the establishment of the Lady Gowrie Centre for pre-school education and the University Women's Wartime Nursery.
[2] During World War II the family moved to Canberra, where Kenneth Bailey was Consultant to the Commonwealth Government and later head of the Attorney-General's Department.
In 1942 she was a member of an unsuccessful delegation to the Minister for Health and Social Services, E. J. Holloway, seeking the establishment of a nursery school in Canberra to free mothers for war work.
[2] After the focus changed to seeking provision of a nursery kindergarten, Yseult Bailey and two other members of the deputation were invited to Government House to advise Lady Gowrie on the progress of the project.