Phyllis Somerville was born at Kadina in 1904, the daughter of a local draper, Edgar Ham, and his wife Ethel (nee Richards). She began writing plays in 1931, and in 1936 won the Advertiser Centenary prize for literature for her novel, Not only in stone. The novel was inspired by the lives of Phyllis Somerville's Cornish ancestors on the Yorke Peninsula, in particular the lives of her grandparents, Joel and Mary Ann Ham. However, the novel she had intended to follow her grandparents' lives, took on a life of its own. Her intention of building a fictionalised biography became a whole new work. Despite this, readers over the years have been convinced that the characters of Polly and Nathan Thomas were real people. In fact the National Trust of South Australia eventually placed a plaque on the wall of the cottage in Robert Street, Moonta, where Phyllis Somerville's grandparents lived, the basis for the Thomas cottage and shop in the novel, recording fictional rather than actual characters.

This marks the site of Polly's bonnet shop as described in the novel "Not only in stone" by Phyllis Somerville.

Somerville, Phyllis, 1904-1991