From an apprentice chef at the old Royal Canberra Hospital, Rhonda Arnall has run successful restaurants in Aranda and Cook before branching into ice cream. And that’s not even half of it. DAVID TURNBULL continues his series of stories of remarkable Canberrans.

For want of a better description Rhonda Arnall is often called “The Ice Cream Lady”.

But if you think that means she’s soft and fluffy like the products she makes you would be mistaken.

She is a dynamo. A real “doer”

Without a single day of business training, Rhonda has been earning her keep off her own wits since she left school. 

From a humble beginning as an apprentice chef at the old Royal Canberra Hospital, she ran successful restaurants in Aranda and Cook before branching out with the Chameleon Creamery.

And that’s not even half of it.

On Friday, Saturday or Sunday of most weekends you’ll find her distinctive yellow Bedford set up at a community market, fete or festival somewhere in Canberra.

On top of that, there’s one-off events. It might be Melbourne Cup day, Floriade, Halloween, a Valentine’s Day lunch or Canberra Day.

You name it; she’ll be there.

And she does the same for towns throughout the region.

To ensure she has enough ice cream for her customers, Rhonda gets up at 4am most Thursdays and goes to work in a professional-quality kitchen in her garage.

Midweek she works for three days as a chef at the Austrian embassy, then backs up five nights a week stacking shelves at Woolies in Belconnen.

And she’s been doing that for more than 30 years.

Rhonda was born In Crookwell, and grew up on a sheep, cattle and potatoes farm at a little town called Laggan, west of Goulburn.

She was the eldest of nine children, and her parents also raised two children orphaned when their parents were killed in a car accident.

“The Arnall family always lived around that area,” Rhonda says.

“All the aunties and uncles and cousins. It was a large family.

If you ask her ethnic background she says: “I’m Australian. English somewhere way back, I guess, but I’m Australian and proud of it.”

When she finished school, she was eager to “get out”.

“A lot of other girls were getting pregnant and just staying there.

“And I thought: ‘This is not my bloody life. No way I am stopping here’.”

She got a job as a cook on a cattle station and was then lucky enough to get an apprenticeship as a chef at the Royal Canberra Hospital.

While she didn’t do well at school, she excelled in the kitchen, completing the four-year apprenticeship in three years, and winning the ACT Apprentice of the Year ahead of 600 apprentices from all the trades.

Her apprenticeship completed, Rhonda then got a job in the kitchen at Old Parliament House.

“There were women working as waitresses and behind the counter, but they didn’t have any female chefs,” she says.

“I was brought in to do the pastry.”

Still in her early twenties, Rhonda headed off to England and quickly found work as a chef in a Swiss restaurant in London’s Leicester Square.

“It was an unusual restaurant, three in one, catering for takeaway, then middle-class and higher-end cuisine.

“We had to cater for all tastes.”

During her stay, she studied at the Cordon Bleu school during the day and worked at night.

Always hungry to learn, she eventually left London to work in a kibbutz in Israel, before returning to Australia for a sister’s wedding.

“I wasn’t back long before friends talked me into buying the Chameleon Restaurant in Aranda.

“Every table had a distinct old-English setting like a chameleon,” she laughs.

After about five years Rhonda moved the restaurant to Cook.

She ran the restaurant for about 10 years and in 2000 morphed her business into ice cream.

“It was an accident, really,” she says.

“The guy who was making ice cream for me was closing down and suggested I take over, so I did.”

But Rhonda changed things dramatically.

Instead of flavours from a bottle she made everything with real ingredients.

Again, she fell on her feet.

“While I was running the restaurant, I used to go to the Hall Market with a friend doing jams and chutneys,” she says.

“My friend wanted to stop, so early in the 1990s I changed to ice cream, and it just took off.”

Rhonda did the markets at Hall and kept getting requests to come to this market or that market, school fairs, rodeos and special events not just in Canberra but Yass, Goulburn and Cooma – even as far as Parkes.

By then, of course, the little freezer on wheels Rhonda had been using was too small so she had a Bedford van fitted out professionally.

“I called the business the Chameleon Icecreamery because the flavours changed,” she says.

“I always had the basics, of course, but I made others depending on what was in season – strawberries, passionfruit, raspberries, mulberries, even pomegranates.”

And her inventiveness with flavours was only the start.

The more ice cream she sold, the more special requests she got from parents.

“They wanted very particular things because their children had allergies – either to a particular fruit, or to dairy, whatever.”

During her apprenticeship at Royal Canberra Hospital, Rhonda had worked with nutritionists. She understood allergies could cause serious problems and wanted to help.

“At first, I changed flavours around to avoid fruit allergies, then I started to experiment making with soya milk or rice milk.

“It was such a joy to see the kids with allergies with a mess of ice cream on their T-shirt and a big smile on their face.”

Rhonda Arnall has been hard at it now for 35 years.

Never married.

“How would I have time for that,” she says.

And when you ask what has motivated her, the answer comes quickly.

“Old Nan,” she says.

“My father’s mother’s name was May, but everyone called her “old Nan”.

“I can still hear her in the back of my head.

“Stop whinging about things. Just get on with it. People who are always whinging about the government or this or that… they don’t get anything done.

“If you see a problem. Fix It.”

Journalist David Turnbull is writing a series of profiles about interesting Canberrans. Do you know someone who deserves a shot in the? Share the name and a number in an email to David via editor@citynews.com.au