Mabel Barker was born in 1907, two years before her father took over his family's successful drapery business in Mount Barker. Miss Barker did not marry and did not do paid work until after the Second World War when she joined the Craft Department of the Red Cross. She did not leave the family home until after her mother's death in 1962. In the first of two interviews she speaks of her forebears and her comfortable childhood home - not only her parents' household, which included a paternal great-aunt and the business' book keeper, but also her maternal grandparents' home nearby where three generations of maternal, female relatives lived. In the second interview she speaks of her schooling, locally and at the Presbyterian Girls' College in Adelaide, and of her life at home after leaving school up to 1930 - her piano studies, the Mount Barker social scene and the restrictive influence of her great-aunt.

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