The Australian Women's Register

Alice Mayo had one brother and seven sisters, one of whom was married to Claude Lomax. She also had extended family in the Canberra area; several uncles having settled there. She seems to have come from a family of independent women. Her mother was a postmistress in Canberra before her marriage in 1880, while in 1907 the ‘Misses Mayo’ were running the Majura Refreshment Rooms in Queanbeyan. A year later another ‘Miss Mayo’ offered board and residence in the same town. In 1911, Alice Mayo’s sister, Elizabeth, took up a position as a probationary nurse at Queanbeyan Hospital.

Alice Mayo’s first husband, Harold Vere Chumleigh was a soldier, a colourful character who appears to have reinvented himself and had several wives. Alice Chumleigh sued for divorce in 1934 on the grounds of desertion. Her husband had been transferred to Townsville in 1928. Alice Chumleigh was living with her sister, Ethel Sells, who had divorced her own husband in 1922, in Marrickville in Sydney.