Her father, Leon, managed to arrange for her release from the concentration camp at Pithiviers (Loiret) before Mora and her mother were scheduled to be deported to Auschwitz.

In an interview in 2004, Mora said: I really wanted to make love to him, because I was very humiliated that he didn't because I was 17, and he said, "I know that you are not happy but we have to wait till we get married."

They chose Melbourne over Casablanca or Saigon because Mirka had read about it in Henri Murger's novel Scènes de la Vie de Bohème, in which a young Parisian photographer (probably based by Murger on Antoine Fauchery)[4] makes regular trips to Melbourne to make his fortune.

[5] They occupied studios in Grosvenor Chambers in the 'Paris End' of Collins Street, and quickly became key figures on the Melbourne cultural scene.

It was followed by the Café Balzac at 62 Wellington Parade, East Melbourne and then by the Tolarno in Fitzroy Street in St Kilda, which opened in 1966, and where Mirka created a bas-relief behind the bar and painted murals on walls and windows of the restaurant and bistro, hallway and toilets, over the period 1965 to 1978.

The Mora family were especially close friends with renowned art patrons John and Sunday Reed, and spent many weekends at their famous home and artists' colony "Heide" (now the Heide Museum of Modern Art) in the Melbourne suburb of Bulleen,[11] and at the Reeds' beach house[12] next door to the Moras' own in Aspendale.

Though they secured an exhibition, it was not a success, as the conservative Commonwealth Arts Advisory Board maintained control over the entries, sending outdated examples of the Heidelberg School and a few Arthur Boyd landscapes.

The episode exacerbated the split between the traditionalist and modernist groups and was not until 1978 that Australia was finally represented at Venice under the auspices of the Australian Arts Council.

[23] A noted colourist and symbolist, Mora's paintings are often bright and bold, constantly reinventing a repertoire of recurring motifs—innocent, wide-eyed children, angels,[24] dogs, cats, snakes and birds, and hybrids of animals and humans.

Perceptions of Mora's work have evolved against the background of the Australian art scene and its changing levels of sophistication.

They redeem it from mundaneity [sic], transforming it into a magical zone where we may glimpse an angel walking unaware or a bird comforting a girl...they enhance it for us with their compassion, gentleness and sympathy.

[27] Robin Wallace-Crabbe, in his 1968 Canberra Times, critique 'Giving away high-mindedness' of Mora's show at the Australian Sculpture Gallery, Narrabundah, hints that though 'delightful' her work is naïve, "like a mixture of May Gibbs' 'Snugglepot and Cuddlepie' and the prevailing Melbourne style in the early fifties",[28] while later, in 1981, Sonja Kaleski is more favourably analytical in her review 'Vibrant, Volatile Artist', in The Canberra Times:[29] "[Mora's] own artistic style has had little to do with contemporary art movements, but has grown out of a need to explore her own life through the medium of fantastic imagery.

[33][17] When Mora showed with Jean Dubuffet and Francois Mezzapelle in In Pursuit of Fantasy opening 18 October 1997 at George Gallery 129 Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda, Melbourne, the French language Le Courrier Australien reported[34] that the vernissage was attended by 800 people, and described her work; [For] Mirka Mora, already well known widely in Australia the themes of the relations between humans and the duality between animality and humanity seem to be her constant preoccupations.

Numerous paintings from 1957 to 1992 and notably Little Lovers (1970), are emblematic representations of the animal fusion of lovers that is also found in Love Quarrel (1991) Heidi curator Kendrah Morgan in a 2011 education kit[35] listed Mora's wide range of influences:"from the theatrical traditions of the Surrealists and the Comédies Italiennes, to the work of the European modernist masters, classical mythology, fairy tales, child and outsider art, and the toys and dolls of her Russian folkloric heritage.

[38] For many years Mora conducted workshops[39] in painting, soft sculpture[40] and mosaics, where countless Australians learned from her unique approach to teaching art.

[citation needed] Mora lived and worked in a number of studios in Melbourne, including Rankins Lane.