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Remember Coles at Sandy Bay for all your Kosher goodies!
20
Eulogy for Mrs Caroline Ann Elias
Reflection at Thanksgiving Service for the life of
Mrs Caroline Ann Elias
2 August 2004
My brothers and I, mum’s sisters June Fizelle and Rosemary Kinstler, her brother Ted Lilley,
and our families, would like to thank you for being here with us this morning to honour the
memory of Ann Elias.
My mother died at St John’s hospital last Tuesday, a little over 7 months after having been
diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was just 8 months since my father died and a little over 12
months since he too was diagnosed with cancer. So the last year has been a difficult one for us
all.
It will not surprise any of you that my mother, being an organised and practical lady, left some
notes for us as guidance for this memorial service. The aim, she said, should be “to generate
feelings of wonder and happiness”. And so, despite the sad cause of us being here, we are very
pleased that you are able to join with us to celebrate the life of Ann Elias and acknowledge the
contribution that she made to our lives.
My mother was born in Hobart on 8 September 1933, the eldest child of Edward and Eileen
Mulhearin-Lilley. Her father was a Tasmanian who went overseas to study at Oxford as a
Rhodes Scholar and then served in Nigeria as a colonial surveyor before marrying and returning
home. Her mother was English and studying natural sciences at Oxford when they met.
She was a child of the Depression and her early years on a small farm in Lenah Valley found her
with the responsibility of being the eldest child with two younger sisters and a baby brother in an
otherwise all-female household, with an aunt and a grandmother helping her mother when survey
field-work took her father away for weeks at a time.
She was educated at Clemes College, from 1939 to 1942 and then at The Collegiate School from
1943-1949. Being academically bright produced the mixed blessing that she entered her
secondary education perhaps two years younger than her peer group. She was Head Prefect in
1949.
She studied at the University of Tasmania from 1950 to 1952 and was awarded the degree of
Bachelor of Arts with Honours in 1953. Her majors were French, German and History.
Degree completed, and at the age of only 19, she applied to enter the Commonwealth Public
Service in the then developing Canberra and was offered the position of Graduate Clerk in the
Department of External Affairs. There she received an excellent training in records
management in a department where the accuracy and security of the written word were taken
very seriously. She was working in External Affairs at the time of the Petrov Affair but with
career development limited by the norms of the day which effectively excluded women from
careers in the Department, she resigned at the end of 1955.
She left Canberra for Europe, hitchhiking with friends. For a time, she based herself in London
with a number of other Tasmanian travellers, and held a temporary job in Piccadilly in the then
very new field of market research for commercial television.
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