R. H. Mathews - Career As A Surveyor

Career As A Surveyor

As a licensed surveyor in colonial New South Wales, Mathews was entitled to do government work that fell within his assigned district while also maintaining a private practice. His earnings were considerable, and rapidly eclipsed the salary of the colony’s Surveyor-General. In the 1870s Mathews was posted successively to the districts of Deepwater, New South Wales, Goondiwindi and Biamble. In 1880 he was posted to Singleton, New South Wales in the Hunter Region. As a surveyor he had many opportunities to meet Aboriginal people and he employed at least one, the Kamilaroi man Jimmy Nerang, in his survey team. Mathews joined the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1875 but never published in the society’s journal until he took up anthropology in 1893. Private correspondence shows that he collected some linguistic data and artefacts during his early days as a surveyor.

Mathews married Mary Sylvester Bartlett of Tamworth in 1872. They had seven children, two of whom became prominent later in life. Their first-born Hamilton Bartlett Mathews (1873–1959) served as Surveyor-General of New South Wales. Gregory Macalister Mathews CBE (1876-1849), their third child, won international renown as an ornithologist. He donated his outstanding collection of Australian books to the National Library of Australia. His collection of bird skins, sold to Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild in the 1920s, is in the American Museum of Natural History, New York City.

After two years in Singleton Mathews resigned from his post as a licensed surveyor. From that time his surveying was confined to a part-time practice. From May 1882 until March 1883 Robert and Mary made a world tour, visiting the United States, Britain and possibly Europe. In Ireland, Mathews visited his parents’ village of Claudy, seemingly unaware that his father had been suspected of involvement in the murder of James Lampen.