McRobbie was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1934. In 1958 he moved to Australia and worked as a teacher in the 1960s in Papua New Guinea. He is currently a full-time writer but has previously worked as a television and radio producer, a ship's engineer, and a college lecturer. McRobbie's first published work was in 1976 with a collection of stories, entitled Talking Tree and Other Stories. In 1991 he started writing the series of Wayne which he adapted in 1996 into a television series entitled The Wayne Manifesto. In 2000 he created the television series Eugenie Sandler P.I. and was short-listed for the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award for older readers for his novel, Tyro. In 2002 his novel Mum, Me, and the 19th C was a finalist for the Aurealis Award for best young-adult novel.