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21
England held the additional interest of enabling her, for the first time, to meet the aunts, cousins
and wider relations on her mother’s side of the family.
On returning to Hobart she undertook a 3-year post-graduate training in Librarianship, working
at the State Library of Tasmania; at Parliament House; and at the University of Tasmania. As
well as adding to her wide general knowledge, these jobs provided much satisfaction and the
basis of many life long friendships.
Her final position was establishing the University Engineering Library in a new building on the
Sandy Bay campus.
I understand that for a time, the Engineering and Law libraries were in the same building so she
knew most of the prominent engineers, lawyers and politicians of the subsequent years, including
how studious they were, whether they returned books on time, or indeed, returned them at all !
She resigned from the University library staff when she married my father, Peter Elias, in
December 1963, and thereafter undertook only occasional paid employment. She did, however,
return to higher education and between 1976 and 1978 completed the theoretical subjects for a
degree in Social Work at the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education.
My mother found many other opportunities to use her skills with documents and reference work.
She wrote, by invitation, contributions for the Australian Dictionary of Biography on the
surveyor, E.A.Counsel; the dentist and botanist, Leonard Rodway; and the valuer J.F.N. Murray.
She was interested in local history and was a member of both the Tasmanian Historical Research
Association and the Bruny Island Historical Society. In later life, she built on the research of
her father and documented the Lilley family history as well as helping my father organise his
family recollections, documents and photos.
She assisted many voluntary organisations with administrative and editing work.
Together with the complementary strengths of her sister Rosemary Kinstler, she developed in the
early 1970s a course for new mothers called “Bringing home your baby” which was run through
the Adult Education Board. Together, they also started and ran the St Davids Cathedral crèche
for some years, and rejuvenated the Hutchins School Clothing Pool. In the mid 1980s, they
established and managed a business that provided home nursing services, known as The Private
Nursing Group, which pioneered the establishment of a group practice of independent nursing
practitioners in Tasmania.
My mother and Rosemary got on really well and it would be remiss of me not to pay tribute to
Rosy who has been an incredibly valuable support for my mother over the last 12 months.
My mother also supported my father in many aspects of the management of his dental practice
and with his contributions to the Dental profession in Tasmania including service on the Dental
Board and running the after-hours emergency roster. She was active in supporting our family’s
involvement in the Oldina Ski Club, The Southern Tasmanian Ski Association and the Sandy
Bay Sailing Club.
My parents enjoyed almost exactly 40 years of marriage together. Indeed, it would be
impossible to separate the achievements of one from the other over this time.
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