Derek Strahan was born in Penang, Malaysia on May 28th 1935, and spent his early childhood in colonial Malaysia. He was evacuated with his mother and sister to Perth when Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942. 

In 1946 the Strahans settled in Northern Ireland and Derek completed his schooling in Belfast, where his interest in music was considered an irrelevance. He was instead directed to study languages to obtain a universty scholarship which he did! So in 1952 he attended Cambridge University studying for an arts degree in modern languages. (French and Spanish).  

Here he developed an interest in theatre and cinema, and acted in a number of university productions. His musical activities were restricted to playing the piano for pleasure and teaching himself the guitar. He graduated in 1954 and worked in London for the next six years as relief teacher, actor, singer-songwriter and assistant film director making commercials. 

In 1961 Strahan returned to Australia and settled in Sydney. He combined composing film music with work as film director, scriptwriter, actor, singer/songwriter and teacher. He worked for 3 years (1964-66) scripting and directing documentary film features for New Zealand television (AKTV2 in Auckland), composing also the music for a 6-part series on Sir Edmund Hilary’s aid work in the Himalayas. 

The year 1967 was spent in the UK, visiting family and teaching. He then returned to Sydney. A period of teaching for the NSW Department of Education in Sydney (1968–70) was combined with writing music for  numerous wild life documentaries and writing songs for live performance and on TV. 

He remained in Sydney till he recently moved to the Gold Coast, in Queensland where he functions in several aligned capacities as opportunities arise: scriptwriter, composer of film and concert music, film director, film and, until everything became online data, record producer.