Amy Maud 'Coral' Starke, nee Burns, was born in Clunes, Victoria. Both her parents came from mining stock and Coral's father, an engine driver in mines, irrigation works and flour mills, upheld their footloose tradition. Before the family (with nine children) moved to Whyalla in about 1916, Coral could remember life in Barooga and Dandenong in Victoria and Jamestown and Moonta in South Australia. The family settled into their makeshift home and the rough and ready life of burgeoning 'Hummock Hill'. After leaving school at fourteen Coral worked for two years as a nurse maid and then for a short time as a waitress at the Men's Ranch before joining her parents in Port Pirie where she worked as a housemaid at the Port Pirie and Central hotels. During this time she met her husband-to-be, a wharf worker, at one of Granny John's dances. She returned with her parents to Whyalla where she was married on 1 January 1930

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