First job: a governess

At 15 years old, it was time for Bertha to find a job.

She couldn't go to high school because the family lived so far away she would have missed the first and last hour of school travelling.

So Bertha was invited to Woodenbong, just over the New South Wales border, to teach the McMillan children their schooling by distance education.

Because her father was mostly deaf, Bertha wrote him a note to ask permission.

"He said, 'I don't like to see you go so far from home at your age, but it's best you get away from Linda'," recalls Bertha.

So, she moved into the home of Archie and Mariah McMillan to tutor five of their eight children - Doris, Keith, Jean, Joan and Marge.

The couple had a large cattle property and Archie worked in the timber industry with his bullock team but Bertha says the family was very poor.

"They had nothing," she says.

"They couldn't afford to buy meat so we used to have to catch rabbits."

Bertha says working as a 'governess' was the best time of her life but after two years she grew tired of it and moved on to a new challenge.

(The children's mother, Mariah later became Berth's step sister. Bertha's father died in 1939 and her mother married Mariah's father, John Martin one year later.)