Anne Rosalind Geddes was born on 15 December 1940 in Ceylon where her father Eric managed a tea plantation. Before she was two-years-old it seemed that the Japanese might invade Ceylon and she and her mother Margaret left Colombo Harbour on board an Australian troop ship the morning before the Japanese bombed the harbour. They returned to Ceylon in 1943 and the Geddes family moved to a tea plantation in India in 1948. In 1953 the Geddes family was re-united in Hobart, Tasmania, where Ros attended the Fahan School. Later she did her nursing training in Melbourne and Sydney. In 1966 she arrived in Singapore and worked at Gleneagles Hospital there. She and Tim Bowden were married in England in 1968, returning to Sydney the following year. Ros decided to tackle journalism, cutting her teeth on writing stories for the Immigration Department about happy migrants to attract more to Australia. She began a career in radio, first involving herself with ABC Radio Nationals trail-blazing feminist unit The Coming Out Show moving on to The Social History Unit where she involved herself in interviewing trail-blazing Aboriginal activists who were not then being recorded by their peers. She co-authored a book, Being Aboriginal with the ABC's Bill Bunbury, having previously written Aspects of Nutrition based on her radio documentaries on the importance of a healthy diet as well as a third book based on her radio series Women of the Land on pioneering women. She managed to find the time to get a Horticultural Diploma from Sydney Technical College, and begin an Arts degree at Macquarie University. She took over from her husband Tim Bowden as Executive Producer of the Social History Unit in 1994 (he was a self-confessed hopeless administrator).