The Dolly team from the 1990s is back with a new project

If you rode a school bus or went to a sleepover in the 1990s, chances are someone had a Dolly magazine in their bag. And it's likely the most dog-eared page was the "Dolly Doctor" section, which offered advice on everything from menstruation to first-time sex and all things "down there".

"Very often the starting point for [a girl reading] Dolly was when a girl got her period and she didn't want to talk to her mum about it," says former editor Marina Go.

Nine former Dolly staffers have reunited to launch a website for over-45s called Tonic. From left: Patricia Sheahan, Aileen Marr, Marina Go, Ute Junker, Megan Morton. Credit: Carlotta Moye

It's that same sense of "entering a new world feeling a little bit lost" that inspired Go and eight of her former Dolly colleagues to create an magazine-style website for the same generation of readers, who are now in their mid-40s and beyond.

Called Tonic, the site features articles on relationships, finance, style and health that Go says are deliberately targeted to the "perimenopausal and menopausal" audience that are thrashed out during weekly Zoom catch-ups.

"We held the hands of these women 30 years ago, and it’s the same group of women [reading Tonic]," Go says. "When I was the editor of Dolly, I was 23, meaning the top end of our readership was only five years younger [than me]."

Former Dolly editor Marina Go (centre) and Ute Junker with 1990s' TV star Bruce Samazan.

Dolly shut its print edition in 2016 after helping launch the careers of media identities including Lisa Wilkinson, and models Alison Brahe and Miranda Kerr, who won the Dolly model search at age 13.

Since departing Dolly, the group had regular catch-ups but the idea for Tonic was hatched a few months ago when six members of the eventual team were having coffee at the home of journalist Ute Junker, Go says. They pulled in a few others who were not at the meeting and got to work, launching a little over a week ago.

A 13-year-old Miranda Kerr on the cover of Dolly.

While Tonic is much more than Dolly with hot flushes, Go says it made sense to bring back an age-appropriate version of Dolly Doctor, which when it launched in 1970 was actually edited by a man (subsequently, Melissa Kang was the Dolly Doctor from 1993 to 2016). The site is also planning a feature with Brahe, now Alison Daddo, who just turned 50 and describes herself on Instagram as a "menopausal mother of three" (she is married to actor Cameron Daddo).

Reflecting on her own trepidation about turning 50 nearly five years ago, Go says it is important for Tonic to cover the broad range of experiences of women as they navigate "this sometimes uncomfortable stage" of life.

"It’s that feeling of being understood, particularly when you're going through menopause, there are a lot of moments when you can feel misunderstood," she says. "I would have loved a little nugget of joy, to open a story and say, 'Yes!', someone understands me."

And while Go forced herself to go out on her 50th to avoid "sitting in a corner sucking my thumb, the other half of the [team] embraced [turning 50]. That difference of views is what makes this group work."

While the plan eventually is to turn what began as a pandemic project into a commercial venture, Go prefers a slow approach. For now, the team – Junker, Carlotta Moye, Aileen Marr, Rachelle Unreich, Theo Chapman, Patricia Sheahan, Lou Fay and Megan Morton, plus Go – is juggling Tonic with their day jobs, families and other commitments.

"Media for women has become a lot less personalised," Go says. "Our area of expertise as a group is to create content that’s very personalised, [to] have a conversation with our audience ... It’s not too different to the style we had 30 years ago [at Dolly]."

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