When Walter Alexander Thistlethwaite was born on 5 October 1913, in Tent Hill, Queensland, Australia, his father, Kenneth Thistlethwaite, was 34 and his mother, Janet Sarah Pollock, was 31. He married Ada Blanche Clarke on 2 May 1938, in Queensland, Australia. He died on 1 August 1983, in Redcliffe, Queensland, Australia, at the age of 69, and was buried in Albany Creek, Queensland, Australia.