Her father Wong Yueng, who worked as a timber cutter and fencer, had come to the Northern Territory from Hong Kong in the 1880s where he married Linoy Moo, her mother.

[4] The family lived in a small house, constructed of stingy bark, bush timber and second-hand galvanized iron, which her father had built for them and they grew much of their own food.

[5] Ah Toy attended Darwin Public School and left when she was 14, in 1931, to become a housemaid for Lyle Tivendale, the Darwin health inspector, in his home at Myilly Point; she worked there for three years and it is here that she met Jimmy Ah Toy, her future husband as he would go there selling vegetables.

[4] Following the Bombing of Darwin she was evacuated to Adelaide, where Jimmy worked in a munitions factory, before being able to return to Pine Creek in 1945.

When she was able to return to Pine Creek she found that the shop had been looted and stripped of anything that could be moved but they started again and reestablished the business.