Dolly Maunder, born in 1881, is the sixth of seven children of a sheep-farming family outside Tamworth in northern New South Wales. Their lives are a relentless round of hard work, indoors and out, relieved only a by few brief years at the local one-teacher school.
Dolly thrives there – “you’re a quick study”, approves the teacher. She also takes note of Miss Murray, the teacher’s daughter, who runs her own school in a nearby village: “the only woman Dolly knew who wasn’t just at home all day, banging the stove door open and closed, heaving the wet sheets around on washday, milking the cow, and always a baby wailing from the crib in the corner”.
