Photograph from Library & Archives NT PH0044/0058 - Mrs Lum Loy -Advertiser Collection,
Cultural heritage
Chinese,
Biographical notes
Lee Toy Kim was born in Shekki (China) around 1884 and came to Darwin about 1898. At the age of 17, she married Lum Loy, a mining engineer. Together they settled in Pine Creek and had one child, a daughter called Lizzie Yook Lin who was born on 8 December 1906. After her husband died in 1918, Lee Toy Kim returned to Darwin with her daughter. Here she bought a four-hectare property at Fannie Bay and established a mango plantation of approximately 200 trees. In 1935, Lee Toy Kim sold the mango plantation and moved back to Darwin to help her daughter run the family cafe on the corner of Bennett and Cavenagh streets. Later she purchased land in Stuart Park where she ran chickens and sold eggs.
After the bombing of Darwin by the Japanese in 1942, Lee Toy Kim was evacuated and she made the long journey down the Stuart Highway to Adelaide and then on to Sydney. After the war she returned to Darwin. She found the city destroyed and the land she had previously owned had been acquired by the government. Compensation was paid for her chicken farm and with this money she bought a small block on the corner of Henry Street and the Stuart Highway. Lee Toy Kim lived and worked her garden on this land until she died on 1980 at the age of 96.
Source: Northern Territory dictionary of biography. Darwin : Charles Darwin University Press, 2008.,
Subject
Women,
Northern Territory,
File type
image/tiff,
Related materials
James, Barbara. No man's land : women of the Northern Territory. Sydney : Collins Australia, 1989. NTC 305.4 JAM,
Hannan, Agnes F. All out! : the effects of evacuation and land acqusition on the Darwin Chinese, 1941-1954. Thesis, Monash University, 1985. NTC 305.8951 HAN,
Northern Territory dictionary of biography. Darwin : Charles Darwin University Press, 2008. NTC 920.9429 NORT,
Isaacs, Jennifer. Pioneer women of the bush and outback. Willoughby, N.S.W. : Lansdowne, 1990. NTC 994.0082 ISA,