The Australian Women's Register

A young Evelyn Evans left England on a ’round-the-world’ adventure and instead found love and a new life in Australia in 1912. She married property manager Charles Maunsell in Cairns, and they lived together at Mulgrave Station near Mareeba, in a tin shed with a concrete floor. Contrary to the soft grey of England, life in the Atherton Tablelands was hot, wet and isolated.

Despite Evelyn striking up friendships with local Aboriginal children, and running a small school for them on the property, white settlers had a poor reputation among tribal Aborigines in the area. When Charles Maunsell was away mustering they invaded the station and Maggie, mother of the Aboriginal children, hid Evelyn under the bed in order to save her life. Evelyn also survived malaria and several miscarriages, proving to those around her she was no English rose.

Later she and Charles set up their own dairy property on the Atherton Tableland. They retired to Brisbane where Evelyn became actively involved with the Country Women’s Association. In 1968 Evelyn’s one and only son Ron Maunsell, won a Country Party plebiscite and in March 1969, took a seat in Federal Parliament as Senator Ron Maunsell. The book, S’pose I Die (1981) was based on Evelyn’s diaries and her conversations with author, Hector Holthouse.