Early Life
In explaining his success in working with Aboriginal people, Mathews claimed that ‘black children were among my earliest playmates’. This could refer to the family’s time at Richlands where William Mathews worked as a shepherd, as did several Aboriginal men from the area. At Mutbilly the family lived on territory that R. H. Mathews later identified as the traditional country of the Gandangara people (also spelled Gundungurra). Mathews’ father was, according to his grandson William Washington Mathews, a ‘broken man’ by the time they settled at Mutbilly. He had sectarian disputes with Roman Catholic neighbours and was several times prosecuted for minor assaults against them. R. H. Mathews and his younger siblings were educated by his father and at times by a private tutor.
Occasional visits by large survey teams inspired Mathews’ interest in his future profession. After his father’s death in 1866, he became an assistant to surveyor John W. Deering in 1866-67. He later trained with surveyors Thomas Kennedy and George Jamieson and in 1870 he passed the government-run examination to become a licensed surveyor.
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