The story began in the darkness before dawn one day in August, 1934, when a car jerked to a stop beside a culvert on the Howlong Road, four miles outside Albury, Victoria-NSW border town. A man stepped out and pulled after him a heavy bundle in a potato sack. he stumbled down the steep side of the road and thrust his burden into the open end of the culvert.

Returning to the car he fetched a can of petrol, poured some of it over the bundle and set fire to it. he stood there for a few minutes in the cold, crisp air, then mounted the bank to the road, poured the remainder of the petrol into the tanks of his car and hurried away. The blazing bundle he left behind was the Pyjama Girl, known officially for the next ten years as 'Miss Albury'.