Lily Ah Toy

Lily Ah Toy (born Wong Wu Len) (24 October 1917 – 15 October 2001) was an Australian pioneer and businesswoman famous in the Northern Territory.

Biography
On October 24, 1917, Ah Toy was born in Darwin to Chinese parents. 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. She was raised in a 'strictly Chinese' household and was raised with the Buddhist and Taoist faiths. 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. Ah Toy remembers walking in to town each day to collect meat and groceries the family could not grow using an old flour bag; she said that her clothes also were made from flour bags.

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. On 9 November 1936 they married in a Chinese style ceremony and she took his surname.

After they married they moved together to Pine Creek where the Ah Toy family had a store and bakery and began working there in the bakery section. Ah Toy had five children of her own (Edward, Laurence, Joyce, Grace and Elaine) and adopted five more.

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. She said of her return: "[w]e had land here, and our roots are here".

In 1982 Ah Toy graduated from Darwin Community College (now Charles Darwin University) with an Associate Diploma of Arts (Ceramics) and she was, at that time, their oldest graduate at 65 years of age.

Ah Toy died in Darwin on October 15, 2001.

Awards
In 1988, as a part of Bicentennial Celebrations she was honoured as one of eight Northern Territorians who had made a significant contribution to the Northern Territory and, in 1985, Film Australia produced her biography.

In 2003, she was honoured in the Tribute to Northern Territory Women.

Resources about
Ah Toy's has two oral history recordings available through Library & Archives NT one recorded by Sandra Saunders in April 1981 (NTRS 3164 BWF 424, NTRS 226 TS 1/2) Jane Bathgate in July 1996 (NTRS 3164 BWF 1771, NTRS 1983 TS 8706).

There is also an oral history recording of Ah Toy recorded in December 1982, this was created for the Australia 1938 Oral History Project, at the National Library of Australia.