My Family Tree

Birth QLD Ref 1939/C724 Matilda Chatfield. Parents Harry Chatfield & Ada Eleanor Russell
Birth registered after 1935 marriage in 1939 instead on 1899.
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SA Death Index
1954 822/634 WILSON, Matilda Annie Oliver Clarence WILSON [H] Adelaide
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Find A Grave Memorial# 186563729
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The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : Monday 13 December 1954)
WILSON.- The sons and daughter of the late Matilda Anne Wilson, sincerely THANK all kind friends and relatives for their beautiful floral tributes, letters, cards and personal expressions of sympathy in the great loss of their dear mother.
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The Australian Women's Weekly (Wednesday 7 October 1953)
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/41079957/4382935?searchTerm=#pstart4382935

THE EMPRESS OF OPALS By JOHN FITZGERALD

She is storekeeper, postmistress and "high-pressure" saleswoman.
As cars in the recent Redex Reliability Trial raced through Central Australia on the stretch from Alice Springs to Kingoonya, they passed through the remote opal-mining settlement of Coober Pedy, bringing a record traffic to its lonely road, where not so very long ago camels were the only transport.
Passing drivers saw little of the settlement because most of it is under ground. The intensely hot climate, lack of vegetation, and scarcity of building materials have caused the opal miners to make their homes in caves or in abandoned diggings.
Most of the buildings above the surface are on the Wilson block, where 54-year-old Mrs. Ethel Wilson presides. An opal buyer and ex-miner, she also runs the general store and post office, and has taken over the job of cutting opals done by her husband before he became ill.
When an opal-miner comes into her store and puts a handful of sandstone-encrusted stones on her counter she wets her finger and rubs it expertly over the glistening seams of color in the stones.
Her greying, brown hair shows no signs of a salon set, and the sun of 54 eventful years has tanned her skin.
But in those pale blue eyes there is wisdom and character.
The buyer never quotes first. She knows that.
"How much?" she asks.
It has taken her a long time to be in the position to utter those two words of inquiry. It took her longer to acquire the steely, fixed, almost frightening gaze that goes with them.
It's not so long ago since she was on the other side of the counter. She then wore a miner's shoes, wielded a pick. She too, smashed her fingernails as she clawed at the sandstone trying to wrench the opals out.
Her dealings in opals now take her interstate every month at a pace which puts the high pressure businessman of the eastern States in the scooter class.
She travels usually to Sydney, leaving Coober Pedy on Sunday nights and driving 20 hours straight to Adelaide.
There she takes a plane early Tuesday morning for Sydney, where she completes her business "over morning tea" and catches the afternoon plane back to Adelaide. A day's rest there and the dawn sees her on the track back to Coober Pedy.
She once missed a Melbourne plane connection. Undaunted, she borrowed a fast car and drove to Melbourne and back to Adelaide in 36 hours.
"I've got to be back in time to meet the weekly mail on Saturday nights," she explained earnestly.
Ethel Wilson hasn't always owned the petrol pump, a fine private collection of opal, a powerful six-cylinder car, the store and post office agency at Coober Pedy.
With her husband and their 10 children, she travelled many miles and did a lot of things before settling at this South Australian desert bonanza.
It was in the cheapest tourers that she learnt about the by-ways of the Northern Territory - "There were no highways" ? the Kimberlys, the Tanami gold fields, Mt. Isa, Arnhem Land, wartime Northern Queensland, Sydney Melbourne, Adelaide.
"My husband Bert and I and six of the children tackled a 500-mile overland trip from Mataranka to Wave Hill - tough Northern Territory - in 1931 just after 'the wet,' she said.
"We crossed several flooded rivers and patches on the tubes lifted. To get through, we had to shoot unbranded bullocks and wrap their hides around the wheels in place of the tyres.
"There were so many of us in the car that trip that the spare tyres on the back touched the ground when we went up a hill. We tied logs on the front of the car to keep the wheels on the road."

Born in Mareeba, Queensland, the daughter of Harry Chatfield - "the best coach whip of his day" - Mrs. Wilson married her childhood sweet heart, Herbert Wilson, in 1918.
They didn't stay in one place long and 1929 found them well established as a "contracting team" in the Cape York peninsula country.
"Bert did the building and maintenance work on stations and I helped in the homestead," Mrs. Wilson explained..
"We did a lot of contract work for the London Mining Trust and late in 1929 moved into the Northern Territory for the first time."
In 1931 they were at Victoria River Downs, then on the Western Australian border.
With "nothing to lose and plenty to gain" they left the border in June that year for William Creek, on the railway line to Alice Springs. They were bound for the flourishing opal fields of Coober Pedy.
The journey took them through the Tanami goldfields in the tracks of explorer Michael Terry.
"We were the first family to make it overland after Terry,

Grandmother reigns at desert bonanza

Who travelled with big six wheeled vehicles. The policeman at William Creek nearly died when we drove in and told him where we'd come from.
Freight costs kept travelling expenses high for the family in those days. Petrol cost 50/- for two four-gallon drums; sugar was 1/6 per lb.; flour 1/-; butter 3/6; and tea 5/6.
The family steered their tourer into Coober Pedy from William Creek on September 13, 1931 - and created another record. It was the first time a car had reached the opal field. All previous traffic had been by camel.
The couple, with their children, lived, as many still do at Coober Pedy, in a dugout. They gouged in searing heat for six months before striking opal. Their first "parcel" brought £4 an ounce.
"We also sold another 220oz. lot for 25/- an ounce. I'd pay £12 an oz. for a similar parcel today," she said.
With "opal in the blood" the Wilson's spent 1934 at the other South Australian field of Andamooka. They then moved to Melbourne.
But 1939 saw them homeless at Claremont (Clermont) goldfields in Queensland after their house in the outskirts of the town was burnt out.
War broke out and the family moved to Charters Towers. There they bought two trucks and worked on aerodromes along the North Queensland coast. Six months later, and with nine children, their transport fleet had grown to six vehicles all working 22 hours a day.
"We gave up the trucking and bought a cafe in wartime Bowen," said Mrs. Wilson.
She claimed an Australian record for one day's meals there, when 800 R.A.A.F. personnel ate 25 hams, 3cwt. of fish, 1cwt. of steak, and 25 chickens.
"It nearly surpasses the double sitting here on Saturday nights before the mail arrives," she said jokingly.
The end of the war found her in Sydney with a sick husband. She decided to return to "the best climate in the world - Coober Pedy."
Their need for transport started her on the first of many visits by plane throughout Australia, which increased soon after she was registered as an opal buyer.

1300-mile trip. "I DECIDED the bargains in transport were to be had at the military disposals sales in Darwin," she said.
"I flew there and outbid some so-called 'big shots' from the south for a nice three-ton truck.
"The problem was to get it back to Coober Pedy - 1300 miles away. I decided to drive it myself.
"Building material was short at the opal fields, so before I left I loaded it with petrol and corrugated iron."
The trip took Mrs. Wilson seven days and, from Alice Springs to Coober Pedy, she crossed dozens of creeks and used every short-cut in the book."
"Everyone seemed amazed to think I was making the trip alone. But I made only one mistake. I followed a dam-sinker from Erldunda station, thinking he was going my way. I ended up at Finke - 100 miles along the wrong track."
She thinks the often heavily sanded track south from Coober Pedy "a good one." Tourists who first see it think of turning back.
"I've had only one mishap on it," she said. "Early this year my son Ray and I were returning from Port Augusta in a well-loaded 30cwt. truck when a rim flew off a rear wheel in the gibber country.
"We rolled over and landed back on our wheels, loaded the scattered goods back aboard, and drove home. There's not the comradeship farther south that there is in the Territory, though five cars passed us that day. None stopped.
"Bogging in wet weather is not as bad down here, either.
"In 1929 we were trying to reach a waterhole at night in the 'Punjab' district of the Territory and were bogged. In the mud and dark I lost my shoes while trying to push the car. We finally slept in the car all night, tired, hungry, and thirsty. Dawn broke? and the waterhole was only yards away!
"Tracks were ill-defined, too. A year later we missed a turn on one such track and finished hanging half way over a creek bank with our head lights in the mud. We had to dig the bank away, taking care the car did not slip, and then pull it on to the road."
At Coober Pedy Mrs. Wilson has an almost constant supply of water from a 500,000-gallon Government tank. Food sup plies arrive regularly once a week.
Her prosperous store is the only one for 200 miles south and 500 miles north. She has built one of the two homes on the surface there. She is a member of the Flying Doctor radio network.
Her home is on the main Darwin - Adelaide overland route.
"I like outback life," she said. "No strikes, gas or electricity worries, and plenty of fresh air and space. You can reconcile yourself to anything and forget loneliness. I've never regretted moving here.
"More people are needed in this country, and anyone who has the stomach to come out here will make a go of it."

The birthplaces of the Wilson children reflect the travels of the family. Arthur was born at Babinda; Ernest at Tully; Alma and Florrie at Cairns; Phyllis at Mareeba; Rose at Herberton; Joan at Townsville; George at Claremont; Herbert was the first white child born at Coober Pedy, and Ray was born at Port Augusta. Mrs. Wilson smiled happily and added, "Of course, I'm grandma to another 22."

Photo: SAND is the main feature of the landscape at the opal-mining settlement of Coober Pedy, Central Australia. Above is shown the Wilson block, where Mrs. Ethel Wilson presides. It includes a guests' dugout (left foreground), living quarters (centre), store, and post office. The radio masts are made of lengths of mulga wood lashed together. Radio is the only entertainment.

Photo: OPAL CUTTING. Mrs. Wilson has, taken over the opal cutting done by her husband before he became ill. The plant at which the works is situated behind her general store.

Photo: ETHEL WILSON, 54-year-old "Empress of the Opal Fields", at Cooper Pedy, is the mother of ten children, store owner, postmistress and housewife of the Opal Fields" at Coober Pedy, Central grandmother of 22, opal buyer and ex-miner.

Photo: IN HER GENERAL STORE Mrs. Wilson trades with aborigines as well as white miners. Here an aboriginal rests on a box of opal while Mrs. Wilson serves his fellow miner with groceries. Food from tins is the main item of diet for the residents of Coober Pedy.

Photo: SHANTY of salvaged corrugated iron which is listed officially by the Postmaster-General's Department as Coober Pedy Post Office. Formerly the post office was situated under ground, but Mrs. Wilson had it removed to the surface. Most homes are underground.

Photo: ENTRANCE to the dugout housing the Flying Doctor radio. In her rote as postmistress Mrs. Wilson sends many telegrams weekly by radio, which are relayed from Alice Springs.

Photographs on these pages by Graham Welsh.

The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : Tuesday 30 January 1934)
With the little Wilsons, of Coober Pedy, I discovered a mutual acquaintance, Miss Berrington, the opal miner, but was told, that like most of Coober Pedy, she had gone to what is literally 'a better 'ole.' Coober Pedy, I was given to understand, was a sad place now. 'Mum' is the only woman on the field, and the little Wilsons long for a greener and more profitable district..

The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : Saturday 16 October 1954)
We made purchases at Mrs. Wilson's store.

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