Small was a fourth-generation Australian, descended from a ship's doctor on her father's side and a Presbyterian minister from Perthshire on her mother's.
[2] In 1955 she joined the family business (The Herbert Small Photographic Supply Stores) which was a retail chain selling AGFA film and cameras with outlets across Australia.
[3] In 1962 Small had a major entry at the Edinburgh Film Festival with Portrait of an Australian.
[3] Indeed, an essay published by Senses of Cinema opined that "She was perhaps the best director in the otherwise aesthetically lacklustre interregnum in filmmaking at the Commonwealth Film Unit occurring between the Golden Era of the 1940s, which featured docudrama stylists Colin Dean and John Heyer, and the reinvention and grooving up of the Unit under the production supervision of Gil Brealey and Richard Mason in the mid 1960s.
"[11] In 1967 Small moved to Wiltshire, England, to make a life with author and producer Stuart Legg.