The Printer

Lilian Alice Maude Robens

1914–2014

The youngest — she set type in the office under the North Ryde post office, married into a Hawkesbury family, and lived to within six months of a hundred.

Four people in the sun before a large round-arched brick church doorway: an elderly woman in a dark dress and feathered hat, a balding man in a light suit with a buttonhole, his arm linked with a dark-haired younger woman in a pale peplum suit and flowered hat with a dark corsage, and an elderly bespectacled woman in a dark dress holding a large bouquet. — Lilian Robens and Marshall McMahon outside the church on their wedding day, January 1947 — at right, the bride’s mother Ada Ellen Robens with the bouquet; at left, most likely the groom’s widowed mother

Born: 4 September 1914 · registered Ryde
Died: 27 February 2014 · Tuncurry
Married: Marshall Thomas McMahon, of the Kurrajong family (m. Marrickville district, 1947)
Lived: 99 years

Lilian Alice Maude Robens was born on 4 September 1914 and registered in the Ryde district under 39288/1914 — the fifth and last of Archibald and Ada’s children, and the only one born on the northern side of the harbour.¹ The birth districts of the five, read in order, date the household’s move up from the inner west to the four years between Muriel and Lilian.¹ She was a young woman of about twenty-one when she stood up for her sister Muriel as bridesmaid at the 1935 Owen wedding.²

By 1936 the electoral roll has her at “Cox road, Ryde”, under her father’s roof at the North Ryde post office he had lately taken the Postmaster-General’s contract for — and against her name is the occupation “printer”.³ She was working in the printing office the premises housed, and the 1937 roll finds her there still, one of exactly three Robens electors on the page.³ By 1943, the family having moved on to Eastwood, she is entered as a “saleswoman”.⁴

On 14 January 1947, in the Marrickville registration district — the inner-west ground her parents had come from forty years earlier — she married Marshall Thomas McMahon.⁵ He was a son of James Edward McMahon, the long-serving Colo Shire councillor for whom McMahon Park at Kurrajong is named; a Roman Catholic where the Robens were Methodist, and about seventeen years her senior — near fifty to her thirty-two.⁶ They had two children, William and Helen.⁷ The couple later moved to the New South Wales mid-north coast, and Lilian died at Tuncurry on 27 February 2014, aged ninety-nine — a little under six months short of the hundred she is sometimes credited with.⁷⁸

Outdoor photograph of a bride in a full-length gown and long veil holding a large cascade bouquet, beside a young woman in a light tiered dress and a soft hat holding a fern-and-flower posy, garden shrubbery behind. — Lilian, right, as bridesmaid to her sister Muriel — the same outdoor frame reproduced on Muriel’s page

Cox’s Road

The last of five

Ethel, Alfred, Pearl, Muriel, Lilian: the youngest came eight years after the next sister and sixteen after the eldest, and she is the one child of the five the family register places at Ryde rather than the inner west.¹ By the time she was a girl the household was above the shop on Cox’s Road, North Ryde, and her father was the storekeeper there.

Little of her girlhood is in the record beyond the photographs — her place in the group portraits of the c. 1900 generation, and the 1935 wedding frame in which, at about twenty-one, she carries a fern-and-flower posy behind her sister Muriel.²

The North Ryde post office

The printer downstairs

In 1935 Archibald Robens was awarded the Postmaster-General’s contract for the North Ryde post office, and the family took the quarters that went with it.³ On the 1936 and 1937 electoral rolls Lilian is there with her parents — “Robens, Lilian Alice Maude, Cox road, Ryde” — and her trade is given as “printer”.³ A jobbing printer’s office was among the businesses the post-office building carried; she worked in it. Hers is the only one of the five children’s roll entries to record a skilled trade.

The family gave up the contract and moved to Eastwood before the war’s end. On the 1943 roll Lilian, at Eastwood with her mother and father, is a “saleswoman” — the printing behind her, the marriage still four years off.⁴

A bearded elderly man and a young woman stand behind a garden table set with a two-tiered decorated cake and vases of flowers. — Lilian with her father, Archibald Robens, beside a two-tier cake in the garden — the occasion unrecorded, but a celebration of the sort put on for the 1945 golden wedding

Kurrajong

The McMahons of Comleroy Road

Marshall Thomas McMahon was born in 1897 and registered in the Richmond district, the son of James Edward McMahon and Mary.⁵⁶ His was a Hawkesbury family: his grandfather Thomas John McMahon had taken up land on Comleroy Road, Kurrajong, in the 1880s, and his father sat on Colo Shire Council from its formation in 1906 until 1941 — its longest-serving member, and the man for whom Kurrajong’s recreation ground was renamed McMahon Park, its memorial gates unveiled with his widow present in March 1947, ten weeks after this wedding.⁶

It was a Catholic family, where the Robens were Methodist, and Marshall was the older party by some seventeen years. He and Lilian married on 14 January 1947, the marriage registered in the Marrickville district.⁵

A man in shirtsleeves and work trousers, a bag slung on a post behind him, stands holding a small baby against his shoulder beside a weatherboard house with a corrugated-iron rainwater tank and a grapevine on wires. — Marshall McMahon with his son Bill as an infant

The mid-north coast

To within months of a hundred

The McMahons had two children, William and Helen, and in time moved north to the coast around Taree and the Great Lakes.⁷ Marshall died on 16 November 1975 and was taken back to the family’s ground at Kurrajong, buried in St Gregory’s Catholic cemetery under a stone that remembers him as “loved husband of Lillian & adored father of Bill & Helen”.⁸

Lilian lived on almost forty years more. She died at Tuncurry on 27 February 2014, five and a half months short of her hundredth birthday, and was laid not with Marshall but in a memorial garden at Pampoolah, near Taree — a plaque reading “Lilian Alice Maude McMahon … loving wife of Marshall and mother of Bill and Helen”.⁷

A group of adults outdoors on a hillside with trees behind — five standing, an older bespectacled man seated at left, and two children in front. — A family gathering after 1947 — the collection’s caption names Llewellyn Owen, Rev. Alfred Robens, Pearl, Marshall McMahon, Ethel and Lilian; the seated man is most likely the widowed Archibald Thomas Robens

The Record

Sources & References

1
Birth registration

NSW BDM birth register 1914, ref. 39288/1914, Ryde district — Lilian A. Robens, father Archibald T., mother Ada E. The five children’s birth districts run Marrickville, Newtown, Marrickville, Marrickville, Ryde; Lilian’s is the only Ryde registration, dating the household’s move north to the four years between Muriel (1910) and her own birth. See also Chapter Three, reference 16.
2
The 1935 wedding photographs

Private family collection, identified by JK — the outdoor frame of Muriel Owen as a bride with her sister Lilian, about twenty-one, as bridesmaid, dated to the 1935 marriage by dress. The same photograph is reproduced on Muriel Isobel Robens’s page.
3
Electoral rolls, North Ryde post office, 1936 and 1937

Commonwealth Electoral Rolls, Division of Parramatta, State District of Ryde, Subdivision of Ryde — 1936, entries 3727–3729, and 1937, entries 3844–3846: Robens, Ada Ellen, home duties; Robens, Archibald Thomas, storekeeper; Robens, Lilian Alice Maude, “Cox road, Ryde”, printer. Exactly three Robens electors on each page; see Chapter Three, references 19 and 20, and reference 8 for the Postmaster-General’s contract awarded to Archibald in 1935.
4
1943 Commonwealth Electoral Roll

Division of Parramatta, State District of Ryde, Subdivision of Eastwood, 1943, entries 5804–5806 — Robens, Ada Ellen, 19 Doomben avenue, home duties; Robens, Archibald Thomas, no occupation; Robens, Lilian Alice Maude, Eastwood, saleswoman. See also Chapter Three, reference 22.
5
Marriage registration, 1947

NSW BDM marriage register 1947, ref. 2825/1947, Marrickville district — groom “Macmahon, Marshall Thomas”, bride “Robens, Lilian Alice”. One of the five descendant marriages listed at Chapter Three, reference 15. The current person entry’s date of 14 January 1947 is from family information; the register confirms the year and district.
6
Marshall Thomas McMahon and the Kurrajong McMahons

NSW BDM birth register 1897, ref. 16049/1897, Richmond district — “Macmahon, Marshal T.”, father James E., mother Mary. His father, James Edward McMahon (died 1946), son of Thomas John and Mary McMahon of Comleroy Road, Kurrajong, served on Colo Shire Council from its inception in 1906 until 1941, its longest-standing member; the former Kurrajong recreation ground was renamed McMahon Park in his honour and its memorial gates were unveiled on 29 March 1947 by H. C. Matheson, McMahon’s widow present (Hawkesbury City Council / “Hawkesbury People & Places”). The Kurrajong-Comleroy Historical Society’s newsletter records Marshall McMahon as an uncle of the Society’s founding president, Kathie McMahon, a granddaughter of James Edward — placing Marshall among James Edward’s children.
7
Children, and the death of Lilian McMahon, 2014

Memorial plaque, Manning Great Lakes Memorial Gardens, Pampoolah (Taree district) — “Lilian Alice Maude McMahon, 04.09.1914 – 27.02.2014, loving wife of Marshall and mother of Bill and Helen, always in our hearts”. Death at Tuncurry, 27 February 2014, aged 99. The two children, William (“Bill”) and Helen, are named on this plaque and on Marshall’s headstone; no further detail on them is published here.
8
Death and burial of Marshall McMahon, 1975

St Gregory’s Catholic Cemetery, Kurrajong (City of Hawkesbury) — Marshall Thomas McMahon, died 16 November 1975; headstone “In loving memory of Marshall T. McMahon, 1897 – 1975, loved husband of Lillian & adored father of Bill & Helen. He gave friendship & love all his life.” He was returned to the McMahon family’s ground in the Hawkesbury; Lilian, dying nearly forty years later, was buried on the mid-north coast.
9
Family photographs

Private family collection (the “From Uncle Jack” series), identified by JK — Lilian with her father beside a cake in the garden; Marshall McMahon holding his infant son Bill beside a weatherboard house; and an outdoor family group, captioned by the family “Lew, Alf, Pearl, Mart, Ethel, Lil”, with two children and a seated older man taken to be the widowed Archibald Thomas Robens. The wedding-day photograph outside the church carries the family caption “Mart, Lil, Ada”.