MATHER, Esther

Enid Esther Mather was born on 6 January 1910 in Queensland.  She was the daughter of William Mandeville Ellis L’Estrange and his wife, Mary Emmeline, nee Alder.  William was an electrical engineer and administrator who became managing director & chairman of directors of the City Electric Light Co., Brisbane.  Esther, as she was known, grew up in the now heritage listed family home, Huntstanton, 188 L’Estrange Terrace, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane.  She was educated at New England Girls’ School, Armidale, NSW and in 1931 matriculated into the Faculty of Science at Brisbane University. In the same year she gained her driving licence. On leaving school she became one of Brisbane’s social set and her activities were regularly reported in the women’s columns of the daily papers.  After completing university she took a job working as a clerk in her father’s company, the City Electric Company.  
On her 26th birthday, 6 January 1936, Esther gained her A pilot’s licence after only two month’s instruction.  Her instructor predicted a brilliant future in flying and she was soon winning races. Described as slight and fair with plenty of energy and enthusiasm, she was obviously a thrill-seeker with no sense of fear. Once crashing her gypsy moth into a fence on coming into land she escaped with only some cuts and scratches to her face, ate a hearty breakfast of steak and eggs and announced that she felt ‘bonzer’. In August 1937 she received her Commercial pilot’s licence, all the while working and studying engineering at the Technical College.
In February 1938 she represented the Queensland Royal Aero Club at an interstate competition held at Mascot aerodrome, Sydney, where she defeated her male rivals in aerobatics.  The judges described her work as ‘almost flawless’.  She was regarded by then as ‘Australia’s champion lady aerobatic’.
On 15 November 1938 Esther married Michael (Mike) Mather, a Qantas pilot, and afterwards the couple moved to Sydney to live.  In 1941 the first of their three children was born and Esther was grounded, the daily newspapers in which she had been such a frequent subject no longer mentioned her.  Michael joined the RAAF during the war, earned a DFC and was appointed squadron-leader.  The electoral rolls show that the couple moved to Victoria around 1949 where Esther’s occupation is given as ‘home duties’.  William Michael, her son, attended Glamorgan in Toorak, and Esther became a good school mum, no doubt among other school related tasks, helping at the school fete.  In 1959 Michael died, leaving Esther to bring up her three teenage children alone. By 1967 the family were living in Camberwell and for the first time Esther’s occupation is given as 'librarian'.  By 1972 she and her family had moved to 43 Albert Street, East Melbourne where she lived until shortly before her death on 7 October 1998 at the Coleraine Hospital near where her daughter lived.