Coralie Busby currently lives in Wynnum, a suburb of Brisbane. Her early work was influenced by her surroundings in Bundaberg, especially the coastal landscapes. She was well-known for her series of paintings depicting the wallum, an area of coastal lowland featuring distinctive tangled woodland. In 1979 when Coralie had finished work on the wallum paintings she said, " In my paintings I am trying to show the wallum as a beautiful part of our coastline and not just somewhere to get bogged. The wallum to me is an area of great beauty and infinite textures, changing moods and amazing regrowth which literally bursts forth after fire and rain. The texture of wallum is hard and stiff and this is what I try to capture."

In 1979 she won the Bundaberg Sugar Company $2000 acquisitive prize for one of her wallum paintings. This enabled her to travel overseas to view the work of the great artists in Europe and England. In the early 1980s she moved into abstract art which was followed by a move to Sydney in 1986. Coralie returned to live in Queensland in 1993.