Two of her novels, Good Luck to the Rider and The Family Conspiracy, won the Australian Children's Book of the Year Award.
Her first children's book, about a girl on an Australian ranch who adopts an orphaned colt, was published in 1953, and she continued to write into the 1990s.
The Watcher in the Garden received an International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) Honour Diploma.
Later, in the 1970s and '80s, she handled a variety of challenging subjects such as the brutal racket in rare bird smuggling (Fly into Danger), urban breakdown (Keep Calm), nuclear warfare (Dinko) and teenage alienation (The Watcher in the Garden).
They have both expressed in their novels of family life not only social changes but the concerns and preoccupations of a growingly complex Australian society.