Alice Ada Cowell was born in 1887 in Norwood, she was the fourth child of James and Ada Cowell who purchased the Briars in Medindie in 1899 and the family lived there until 1915.
Alice attended Misses Brown’s School, it was located closed to the Briars and had about 80 pupils when Alice started there. It had a strong ethos of educational excellence for woman and now, it is now the Wilderness School, Alice also boarded and studied at the Methodist Ladies College, Cheltenham Street, Malvern.
She and her family and their social circle spent many summers at Port Elliot at Ratowa, a historic house on the Strand. In May 1915, Alice was invited to Chowilla Station by Douglas Roberston’s family (her future husband) family and they were married in at St. Martin’s church in Kent, England on 19th August 1918. During this time, Douglas was a gunner and lieutenant within the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), stationed in Kent and was sent to France. From all reports, Alice was a volunteer with the Red Cross in London and also wrote condolescence letters to Australian families. She was required to keep records of lives lost in WW1 and had to manage a small team. Alice and Douglas were back in Australia by 1920, Douglas was very ill with influenza and Alice was very traumatised by her experiences of the war. They spent a year on the Lotus, which has been meticously restored by Armfield slip volunteers after being found on Chowilla station and is now moored at Goolwa.
Alice was a remarkable women, she had very close bonds with her family. Her grandchildren, nieces and nephews have very fond memories of her kindness and care for them. She was an avid reader, eloquent writer, well-travelled, loved her garden and produced a wealth of correspondence. She encourage reading in her grandchildren, and gave Nancy, an early edition of the ‘Swallows and Amazons’ and other books in this series by Arthur Ransome. This children’s book contains very strong female characters who are independent, enjoy adventure and can solve problems without adult intervention. Sailing and boats feature prominently in the book, so the story of Alice and the Lotus will be celebrated as part of the Wooden Boat Festival in 2023.
Her grandchildren recall that Alice had a study at her house at Braemar in Medindie which may have not been commonplace for a woman at this time. It has been referred to the ‘sewing room’ but it appears that it was much more than that, it was her reading and writing room. One likes to think of Alice, writing to her family on her desk whilst looking out on her beautiful garden. We have created our interpretation of ‘Alice’s study’ at the Strand Gallery with many of her original postcards, photographs and correspondence and information about her link to the ‘Lotus’.
