Evelyn Mather

Story

Evelyn Julia Powell was born on the 18th August 1904 in Mandalay, Burma to Ethel (nee McCulloch) and Henry Burgess Powell. She came to Australia with her family in 1913. Prior to moving to Australia the family lived in a number of towns including Mandalay (1904) and Maymyo (1906-13). Her father was in the Indian Civil Service having joined as a surveyor in the Department of Land Records in 1890. He retired after 23 years of service in 1913 and chose Tasmania as a place to settle down. This was because of a recommendation from friends who described Tasmania as so like England and not nearly so cold. There was also a Friends\’ School run by Quakers in Hobart. These factors combined with photographs of Tasmania tempted the family to move to Australia.

They left Rangoon on the ‘Gloucestershire’ and sailed to Colombo where they stayed about a week. Then they travelled on the ‘Gobeu’, a German ship, to Melbourne and on the ‘Wimmera’ to Hobart arriving on the 19th September 1913. Once in Australia they were only supported by her father\’s investment interests because he did not receive his pension. These interests were badly depleted when the Pakokku Agricultural Bank was burnt down with heavy losses. Julia, her grandmother, died in 1919 and her father in 1920.

Evie and her brother Frank were educated at the Friends\’ School where she was keen on sport and represented her school in the senior hockey team. She left school in 1921.

When she was in her early twenties she met Robert Oswald Mather (descendant of Robert Mather) at a dance for past students of the Friends\’ School. They were married in 1928. Her husband, Waldie, came from a family of Quakers, some earlier members of which had been involved with others in the establishment of The Friends\’ School, Hobart, the only Quaker school in Australia and run by the Society of Friends. Waldie, a fruit broker who shipped apples to England, was born in Franklin on the Huon River south of Hobart. After marrying, they lived in Hobart and had three children, Robert Powell born in 1929, Christine Elizabeth born in 1930 and Stanley Benson born in 1932.

Times were not easy during the closing stages of the Great Depression and became worse after the start of World War II when fruit shipping to England ceased. During the war years Evie, apart from bringing up her children and looking after her mother, who lived next door, was involved with her mother in voluntary works related to the church and the war effort. She was always socially inclined and during the years her children were growing up took a special interest in their development including social and sporting activities. For her, regular tennis and bridge games were important. She continued to play both games into her eighties.

In 1951 her daughter Christine was married and had a daughter, Robin, in 1952. Evie was now a grandmother and became involved in caring for Robin with whom she developed a special bond. Her mother, Ethel, died in 1952. In 1953 she travelled to England to visit her son Robert who was on leave there from work in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. She travelled overseas again in 1957 visiting her son Stanley who was working in England.

One of her special interests was voluntary work with organisations involved in care for the aged. Evie had a strong view that people should try to plan during their lives for their independence in later years, a situation she managed to achieve with pride in her own case. After Waldie died in 1976 she lived on her own in a church supported unit until she married again for eight happy years before she was a widow again. She returned to a church supported unit in the same block she had lived in previously and lived a full and happy life on her own until her sudden death in 2002 aged 97 years. At the time of her death Evie had nine grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren.

Robert Oswald Mather was a descendent of Robert Mather and Ann Benson. He married Evelyn Julia Powell in 1928. Their second son, Stanley Benson Mather married Veronica Ann Foster, the only child of Betty and Maurice Foster from London, England, in 1958. Their daughter Carey Ann Mather married Andrew Nicholas Bailey, the son of George John Bailey and June Pamela Bailey (nee Skinner) who migrated from London, England to Perth, Western Australia in 1952. Their stories are recorded as part of the Immigration Bridge project.

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