Alvena Alma Fox was born on the 13th of March 1912, to Frederick and Bertha Fox nee Muehlberg, the third youngest of nine children.

‘Vennie,’ was educated at Cudlee Creek Public School, located at junction of Lobethal Road and Fox Creek Road. The school consisted of one teacher, at around eighteen years of age to teach a full school (i.e. grades one to seven) of approximately twenty pupils.

Her adolescent life was busy working on her father’s property. Their work was doubled in that her father Fred insisted on not buying a water pump for watering fruit trees on the hillsides. Apart from the normal duties of a mixed dairy, extra tasks also earned money for the family, like stripping black wattles of their bark to make brown shoe dye.

At sixteen, she caught Influenza, which developed into Pleurisy and then pneumonia in only a week. Her condition was made worse by her father’s stubbornness to call for a doctor at first. After two months in the Gumeracha Hospital, during which time her elder sister Blanche died of the same condition, Fred removed her from hospital while she was still bald and weak.

After a short time, she found herself working as hard as before and so by the age of twenty she had the courage to leave her home and find work for herself.

Her husband to be ‘Ern’ Muehlberg helped her acquire a live-in maid position for a doctor in Mt Barker. Seven shillings a week and four years later she had the confidence in her skills to acquire work in Adelaide.