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 Ah Toy was born on 24 October 1917 in Darwin, Northern Territory, to parents of Chinese origin. Her father Wong Yueng, 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 grew up with the Buddhist and Taoist traditions. The family lived in a small house, constructed from materials such as stringy 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 walked into town each day to collect food the family could not grow; she also said that her clothes were made from flour bags.

Ah Toy attended Darwin Public School and left in 1931 at the age of 14, to become a housemaid for Lyle Tivendale, the Darwin health inspector, in his home at Myilly Point. She worked there for three years and met Jimmy Ah Toy, her future husband, who sold vegetables there. On 9 November 1936, they married in a Chinese style ceremony and she took his surname.

After they married they moved 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 also adopted five more. She said of her return: "e had land here, and our roots are here".

Resources about Ah Toy 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), the other by Jane Bathgate in July 1996 (NTRS 3164 BWF 1771, NTRS 1983 TS 8706).

Another recording of Ah Toy was made in December 1982 for the Australia 1938 Oral History Project, at the National Library of Australia.