Cilka Zagar was born in Slovenia and came to Australia in 1963. Five years later she moved with her husband to the opal mining town of Lightning Ridge in New South Wales. She began teaching Aboriginal students from Lightning Ridge and Walgett and her educational involvement with Aboriginal families and communities grew into a broader relationship compiling and editing Aboriginal narratives as a non-Indigenous collaborator. The people whose stories appear in Goodbye River Bank include; Michael Anderson, Kevin Anderson, Joan Ashby, June Barker, Roy Barker, Herbert Brown, Andrew Carroll, Joe Carroll, Daisy Carroll, Ross Davis, Alex Dennis, Dianna Dennis, Dudley Dennis, Glen Dennis, Joanna Dennis, Joyce Dennis, Laurence Dennis, Lola Dennis, Maria Dennis, Issac Dennis, Muriel Dennis senior, Muriel Dennis Junior, Pauline Dennis, Kathleen Dodd, George Fernando, Ted Fields, Allan Friend, Fay Green, Ivy Green, Harry Hall, Gary Murphy, Lucy Murphy, Michele Nagy, Elsie Parker, Thelma Thorn, Elizabeth Wallace, Albert Walford, Marge Walford, Tom Winters.