In its early phase, her life-story was a bit like a Barbara Cartland-style romance. In the late 1870s, the conventional young Englishwoman, Dorothy Fuller, bred in a Victorian manor house in Surrey and educated there by governesses and private tutors, goes out to Australia to visit relations and there meets and falls in love with a fine, rich, young Australian, George Barrow Montefiore. After a short trip home, she goes back to Australia to stay.