near Taralga. They seem to have been itinerant for some years. R. H. Mathews was born at Narellan, southwest of Sydney, on 21 April 1841. The family's fortunes improved when they acquired a farm of at Mutbilly near the present village of Breadalbane, New South Wales in the Southern Tablelands. Goulburn is the nearest city. Early life In explaining his success in working with Aboriginal people, Mathews claimed that "black children were among my earliest playmates". This could refer to the family's time at Richlands where William Mathews worked as a shepherd, as did several Aboriginal men from the area. At Mutbilly the family lived on territory that R. H. Mathews later identified as the traditional country of the Gandangara people (also spelled Gundungurra). Mathews' father was, according to his grandson William Washington Mathews, a "broken man" by the time they settled at Mutbilly. He had sectarian disputes with Roman Catholic neighbours and was several times prosecuted for minor assaults against them. R. H. Mathews and his younger siblings were educated by his father and at times by a private tutor. Occasional visits by large survey teams inspired Mathews' interest in his future profession. After his father's death in 1866, he became an assistant to surveyor John W. Deering in 1866–67. He later trained with surveyors Thomas Kennedy and George Jamieson and in 1870 he passed the government-run examination to become a licensed surveyor. Career as a surveyor As a licensed surveyor in colonial New South Wales, Mathews was entitled to do government work that fell within his assigned district while also maintaining a private practice. His earnings were considerable, and rapidly eclipsed the salary of the colony's Surveyor-General. In the 1870s Mathews was posted successively to the districts of Deepwater, New South Wales, Goondiwindi and Biamble. In 1880 he was posted to Singleton, New South Wales in the Hunter Region. As a surveyor he had many opportunities to meet Aboriginal people and he employed at least one, the Kamilaroi man Jimmy Nerang, in his survey team. Mathews joined the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1875 but never published in the society's journal until he took up anthropology in 1893. Private correspondence shows that he collected some linguistic data and artefacts during his early days as a surveyor. Mathews married Mary Sylvester Bartlett of Tamworth in 1872. They had seven children, two of whom became prominent later in