[3] She was educated at Maitland High School and was appointed secretary of the Old Girls' Union's Younger Set in 1934.

[4] Donkin had her first short story published at the age of eight and began writing on social happenings for the Maitland Daily Mercury at 16.

[6] The following year her husband's company transferred him back to Australia[7] and she began writing as Alison Clare.

[6] Nancy Shepherdson, writing in Twentieth-century Children's Writers, considered Donkin's first books to have "uninspired plots and much digressive conversation".

Her death notice in the Herald Sun concluded, "A storyteller, a teller of tales and weaver of dreams".