Sixty-eight-year-old Dahlia Lewis or Auntie Pauline as she is known to her relatives and friends is an amiable and unpretentious woman who values much more the independence of her self-employment than the title of ‘Woman in Business’ which we choose to ascribe to her. She is the grande dame of the coal-mining women of Yarowkabra, having begun baking and selling coal in 2000.
Yarowkabra is a community of around 400 people most of whom engage in some form of subsistence labour to make ends meet. Subsistence farming predominates and there is little if any regular paid employment here. Dahlia Lewis must work if she is to live and baking coal, she believes,