Australian Dictionary of Biography

'Darwin Ladies', Myrtle Yee (centre back) with Selina Hassan to her left.

Library & Archives NT, Shu Ack Fong Collection

Myrtle Houng On Yee (1914–1997), businesswoman, soft drink manufacturer, and shop assistant, was born Fong Kim Lan (鄺金蘭) on 29 June 1914 at Brocks Creek, Northern Territory, sixth of nine children to Wong See (黄氏) and her husband Fong Ding (鄺敬肇), market gardener and miner. Fong Ding was born at Hoiping (開平) in southern China and worked in the Northern Territory, where he met and married Wong See in 1916. Soon after Myrtle was born, the family moved to Pine Creek, a small town south of Darwin, where her father ran a market garden and her eldest brother, George Lim, purchased a butchering business. She attended school there until she was about eleven. Despite leaving school at such a young age, she later signed her name with a confident hand.

The family followed George’s business interests further inland, first to Emungalan at Katherine and then to Mataranka. A strong and independent girl, Myrtle later recalled that she did ‘a man’s job’ (LANT NTRS 226, TS 246), including driving to make flour deliveries, working in her brother’s shop, and helping with the family’s vegetable plot. In 1928 her name appeared in the newspapers after she drove her brother’s new Chevrolet along dangerous roads from Katherine to Darwin in a fourteen-hour sprint to get her sister-in-law to a dentist.

On 12 May 1930, two years after her father’s death, Myrtle married Charlie Houng On Yee (餘洪安) in an arranged marriage in Darwin. Charlie was also Northern Territory-born to migrant parents but was educated in China from the age of five. He did not return to the Territory until 1923 when, aged eighteen, he began work as an apprentice tailor with Toy Sing & Co. Their wedding was a large, dual Chinese Republican and Australian civil ceremony held at the Kuo Ming Tang Hall. It was noteworthy as the first of several modern Chinese weddings conducted by the Darwin branch of the KMT (Chinese Nationalist Party) ‘under the new rules regulating Chinese marriages under the laws of the Republic of China’ (Northern Territory Times 1930, 244) between 1930 and 1932. They were part of a generation of Chinese Territorians who were inspired by the politics of the KMT, which promoted an equal role for women in society. The Darwin branch was the first to open committee membership to women in 1921. Unlike her mother, Myrtle followed western traditions and adopted her husband’s surname, On Houng, but registered their four sons under his Chinese family name of ‘Yee.’

After partnering with a Chinese Australian businesswoman, Selina Hassan, in her tailoring business, the couple founded ‘Charlie Houng On and Myrtle Laundry’ in Cavenagh Street, Darwin, during the Depression. It was a simple flat-roofed corrugated iron building with only push out panels for ventilation. Laundry work was labour-intensive involving long hours. They had no running water, relied on copper boilers to heat water, and used wood (later kerosene-fuelled) irons. Later, the building’s roof was lost in the 1937 cyclone. In June 1940 for nine months, Myrtle, trading as ‘M. Houng-On,’ was the sole agent for Malvern Star bicycles in Darwin.

In June 1941 Myrtle, together with her husband and two younger brothers Ernest and William, ran Darwin Aerated Water factory in Knuckey Street, which sold cordials and soft drinks. She did the mixing. During World War II she evacuated Darwin with her four sons aboard the SS Montoro, the last civilian ship to leave town, and their factory was requisitioned by the army between 1942 and 1946. ‘We were like kings and queens [on board the ship],’ remembered Myrtle, ‘we were the last ones left to go, and oh, we were served like passengers’ (LANT NTRS 226, TS 246). Her husband was evacuated later having witnessed the bombing of Darwin. He went on to work as a chauffeur in Sydney, where the couple ran a small market garden with friends in Botany and later a fish and chip shop in Glebe. After the war the family were pleased to return to Darwin, a place they considered home.

The family successfully ran Darwin Aerated Water till the early 1960s. When Cyclone Tracy hit in 1974, they owned six blocks of houses in Darwin. Myrtle, who sheltered with family members in the bathroom for four hours, remembered it as ‘a nightmare … you couldn’t describe it’ (LANT NTRS 226, TS 246). They were forced to sell property to re-establish themselves. In their later years Myrtle and Charlie lived a comfortable life in a home decorated with rosewood furniture imported from Hong Kong. They enjoyed several overseas holidays but increasingly took pleasure in a more settled life tending to their garden. Myrtle died in Darwin on 24 November 1997 and was buried in Darwin general cemetery next to her husband, who had predeceased her a year earlier. Their matching headstones featured formal photographic portraits and were decorated with two twelve-pointed suns commemorating their long-time association with the KMT.