[6] Gould was born in Sydney, New South Wales, on the first day of competition of the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne.

While attending St. Francis, she planned to compete in the Santa Clara International Invitational in June, and Cincinnati's National AAU Championships in April.

[11][13] Carlile, a two-time Olympic Coach for Australia, was a physiologist at the University of Sydney, and at the forefront of providing scientific training to athletes.

A leader in the use of interval workouts timed with pace clocks and in the use of heart rate tests for assessing effort, he helped popularize "tapering", a method that slowly reduced training intensity in the weeks before important meets to maximize performance.

He helped develop the crawl stroke, focusing on a high speed two beat kick which emphasized the strong use of the arms, a technique studied and adopted by Gould.

[14] At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, Gould won three gold medals in the 200 and 400-meter freestyle, and the 200-meter individual medley, setting a world record in each race.

[17] At the age of 16, she retired from competitive swimming, citing pressures placed upon her by her success and media profile.

She studied at the Sydney Film School (2007, Cert IV documentary film, Digital Filmmaking) and was awarded a Master of Environmental Management (2010, with a thesis on the social uses and functions of public swimming pools), and a Master of Contemporary Art (2012, with a video piece Loops and Lines).

She married Neil Innes at 18, became a Christian, and lived on a working farm near Margaret River in Western Australia's South West.

[20] Her marriage to Innes ended after 22 years, coinciding with a return to public life,[26] and she married Milton Nelms in 2007.

[27][28] On 10 October 2023, Gould was one of 25 Australians of the Year who signed an open letter supporting the Yes vote in the Indigenous Voice referendum, initiated by psychiatrist Patrick McGorry.