The Book that Made the Dough

Nookie Teal quite liked the idea of training to become a nurse or a teacher when she left school, but it was wartime and she was needed at home. With so many local men signed up to military service, labour was short on the family dairy farm at Kennedy’s Creek, deep in the Otway Ranges of western Victoria. There were eight younger brothers and sisters to care for too.

So Nookie, christened Dorine Howard, gave up the idea and, at the age of fourteen, took over cooking and cleaning for her mother, Molly, so she could spend more time out in the paddock working alongside her husband, Jack.