Chapter Three
Archibald & Ada Robens
The Postmaster of North Ryde
A technical-school draughtsman who became a storekeeper, then took the Crown’s contract for the North Ryde post office — and lived to see ninety-nine years, outlasting every one of his eleven brothers and sisters but one.
- 1895
- Married at Newtown, 31 July
- 713
- The Gazette tender for the North Ryde post office
- 50
- Years of marriage, celebrated at Eastwood in 1945
- 99
- Years — months short of a hundred
Archibald Thomas Robens was the firstborn of the twelve, born on 3 September 1872 in Sydney, his birth registered under 2307/1872.1 His childhood was spent moving between the urban trade sectors of Sydney and the country plains of the Central West, following his father’s saddlery and leather transit lines — and it gave him something none of his siblings seem to have had: a technical education.
Perspective Drawing, and Shorthand Manual
During his youth in the Central West, Archibald attended the Bathurst Technical School under the Department of Public Instruction. The regional examination rolls record him passing first-year civil examinations in Perspective Drawing and securing second-grade passes in Freehand Drawing.2 The same rolls place his maternal cousin, Charles Mills, on the same campus, passing practical chemistry.
By the 1891 season he had moved into commercial and administrative studies: the master Technical College Examination Ledger records a second-grade pass under the Shorthand Manual division.3 He then returned to metropolitan Sydney, where census returns track him in the family’s crowded household on Seaview Street, Marrickville.1
Ada Ellen Baldock was born in 1873 in the Bathurst district, daughter of Alfred Baldock, a coachbuilder, and Frances Elizabeth Baldock, née Bawn.1 She completed local schooling and home duties in the region before her parents relocated the household permanently to Newtown, where she and Archibald met. Her parents’ own story — Alfred’s Durham Street coachbuilding partnership, the family’s years at Darlington and Newtown, and her eleven brothers and sisters — is told in the companion chapter, The Baldock Family.
A Marriage, and Fifty Years to Prove It
On 31 July 1895 Archibald Thomas Robens, aged twenty-two, married Ada Ellen Baldock, aged twenty-one, in the inner-western parish networks of Newtown, under civil registration 5357/1895.1 Earlier drafts of this history gave the date as 29 January; the couple’s own golden wedding notice, published fifty years later to the day, settles it.4
One small thing about that registration is worth knowing before anybody goes looking for it. The index sets the groom as ARCHIBALD I ROBENS, not Archibald T. His birth entry of 1872 gives the T plainly, and every other record of his life gives Thomas; the marriage is the one place the middle initial comes out wrong, and it is the reason the entry can be hard to find. The same registration renders his mother, elsewhere Mary Rebecca Jane, simply as Rebecca.1
They began married life in the inner west, welcoming their first two children — Ethel Ida Violet and Alfred Archibald Thomas — at Newtown before the turn of the century.
The Fruiterer, the Dealer, and the Motor Driver
Archibald worked in urban trading and retail exchange through the early 1900s, and the Sands Directory of 1905 gives the trade a name: on Marrickville Road, at Marrickville, “Robens Archibald T., fruiterer”. He kept a fruit shop, in a strip of the road already thick with grocers, bootmakers, drapers and two other fruiterers.27 There may have been an earlier trade still. An undated electoral revision list for the Newtown–Camperdown division carries, among the names struck off the roll, “Robins, Archibald Thos., 135 King-street, Newtown, saddler”. The forenames fit, the surname variant is one this family attracts constantly, the district is where he married and where his son was registered — and saddlery was his father’s trade. It would put the eldest son briefly in the family line of work before he turned to fruit. No other record gives him as a saddler, and the identification rests on name and place alone, so it is set down as a candidate and nothing firmer.28 The Daily Telegraph of 10 August 1907 reported that the Newtown Court had fined him ten shillings, with six shillings costs — or three days’ imprisonment — for carrying on the business of a second-hand dealer at Marrickville on 27 July, without holding the necessary licence.5 The family kept growing, and the children’s birth registrations map the household’s movement more precisely than anything else in the record. Ethel was registered at Marrickville in 1898, Alfred at Newtown in 1899, Pearl at Marrickville in 1906, Muriel at Marrickville in 1910 — and Lilian, in 1914, at Ryde.16
By 1916 records place him managing the family’s residence at the “Glenroy” estate on Sydney Road, Manly — the same address his younger brother Norman gave when he enlisted in the AIF that September. As automotive transport spread across metropolitan Sydney, Archibald entered the heavy transport sector and spent years working as a motor driver, a trade also taken up by his brothers William and Harold.6 While they moved between country transport routes and a shared Parramatta home, Archibald anchored his career in Sydney’s northern districts.
The Move North, Dated by a Birth
Lilian’s registration is the earliest hard evidence of this family in the Ryde district — twenty-one years before the post office contract usually taken as their arrival there. Between Muriel at Marrickville in 1910 and Lilian at Ryde in 1914, they crossed the harbour.16
One entry sits in the gap. The Sands Directory of 1913 lists Archibald Robens at Hercules Street. The copy held gives no suburb, which is a pity, because a Hercules Street has appeared once already in this history — at Chatswood, on the 1913 electoral roll, where Arthur Leslie and Florence Maud Doust were living a few streets from Archibald’s aunt Martha Jemima and her husband David Doust of Anderson Street.17
Same family circle, same street name, same year. It would be a satisfying thing if Archibald had moved north and landed among his aunt’s people, and it may be exactly what happened. It is equally possible that these are two different Hercules Streets in a city with several. The suburb on the directory entry would settle it; until somebody reads it, this is a lead and not a finding.17
The Contract, and the Rooms Above the Shop
During the Great Depression Archibald shifted back to retail commerce. The 1930 Commonwealth Electoral Roll records the household established on Cox’s Road, North Ryde, with Archibald logged as a storekeeper and his daughter Pearl Ada Fanny living under the same roof and working the counters beside him as a shop-assistant.7
Then came the commission. On 21 February 1935 the Postmaster-General’s Department published its accepted public tenders in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, and Archibald was awarded contract entry 713 — “Conduct of Post and Telegraph Office, and Delivery of Postmen’s Mail” at North Ryde.8 The family occupied the living accommodation built directly above the ground-floor post office and retail space.
Four rolls show the household at Cox’s Road across seven years, and the daughter at home changes with each. In 1930 it is Pearl, a shop-assistant beside her father.7 In 1933 it is Muriel Isobel, at home duties, with Ada Ellen and Archibald Thomas the storekeeper.18 In 1936, and again unchanged in 1937, it is the youngest, Lilian Alice Maude, entered at Cox road, Ryde, as a printer — working downstairs in the office her father held the contract for.1920
A correction belongs here, because this account carried the error for some time. It said the 1937 roll also recorded Archibald’s retired father, Thomas Robens, under the same roof, and made three continuous generations of it. Thomas Robens died in November 1928, nine years before that roll was printed, so it cannot have been him. The 1936 and 1937 pages each carry exactly three Robens entries — Ada Ellen, Archibald Thomas and Lilian Alice Maude — and no more.1920
The man behind the mistake is on the same page and the same road. “Reynolds, Thomas, Roma, Cox’s road, North Ryde, retired” stands a few lines above the Robens block in both years. A retired Thomas on Cox’s Road, alphabetically close and misread once, became a dead man living with his son. He was a neighbour.1920
The Parramatta Intersection
On 9 May 1937 Archibald’s car was struck and overturned by a gas-service lorry at the intersection of Ross Street and Church Street, Parramatta, briefly trapping Archibald and his daughter Lilian inside.10 The Parramatta Police Court proceedings, reported in the Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate of 20 September 1937 and identifying him by his office as the North Ryde Postmaster, ended in a conviction against the lorry driver, Robert Cromp, a gasfitter of Rickard Avenue, Bondi — fined thirty shillings with two guineas costs for dangerous driving. Archibald gave evidence that he had sounded his horn on approaching the intersection and was travelling about twelve miles an hour when the collision threw his car onto its side; an eyewitness, Charles Budin, testified that Cromp had “ample room to swerve” and miss him.10
A wife & mother. — her husband. [Footstone: Mother & Father.]
The Golden Wedding, and After
In the early 1940s Archibald closed the storefront and the postmaster’s responsibilities and entered retirement, the couple moving to 6 Denistone Road, Eastwood. On 31 July 1945 they marked fifty years of marriage at that house, publishing a commemorative notice in the Sydney press.4
Robens—Baldock. — July 31, 1895 at Newtown, Archibald, son of the late Mr. and Mrs. T. Robens, Bathurst, to Ada, daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. A. Baldock, Newtown. Present address, 6 Denistone Road, Eastwood.
The notice fixes the spelling of the street in print, in the couple’s own lifetime — Denistone, not Denison, settling a discrepancy that turns up elsewhere in the family’s own captions.30 It also gives a shorthand version of each side’s origins: Archibald “of Bathurst”, after his father Thomas’s long association with the town, and Ada “of Newtown”, where she had in fact grown up after her parents left the Central West.
Ada Ellen Robens died there on 3 April 1949, aged seventy-five. She was interred in Section D, Row 3 of the Methodist portion at Macquarie Park Cemetery under a headstone reading “a wife & mother.”11 The Supreme Court opened her estate under probate index B 7751, and on 13 July 1949 granted administration of her £450 estate to her son Alfred and her daughter — recorded in the court papers as Ethel Ida Violet Cook.12
The rolls then follow him out of the post office and across Eastwood. In 1943, at 19 Doomben Avenue, the three of them are together for the last time: Ada Ellen at home duties, Archibald Thomas at no occupation, and Lilian Alice Maude — a printer in 1937 — now a saleswoman. Whatever year the contract ended, by 1943 he had put it down; he was seventy-one.22
The 1949 roll, Subdivision of Eastwood, has him at entry 6864: Robens, Archibald Thomas, 6 Denistone road, no occupation. He is alone in it. Ada had died that April.21 The rolls of 1954 and 1958 find him at the same address with the same three words against his name — nine years at 6 Denistone Road, alone, from the year Ada died to his eighty-sixth.2324 Archibald stayed on at Denistone Road into the 1950s, the rolls listing him under “no occupation,” and then left the northern districts altogether. The 1963 roll, Subdivision of Leichhardt, has him at entry 5101: Robens, Archibald Thomas, 15 Marion street, no occupation. He was ninety-one, and the same house number carries a second elector, Sarah Ann Rigart.25 Five years later he is still there — 15 Marion Street on the 1968 roll, ninety-six years old, and this time the only name at the number. Mrs Rigart had moved to Norton Street.26 He outlived his wife by twenty-three years, outlived all four of his brothers, and outlived all but one of his seven sisters. He died at Leichhardt on 16 January 1972, aged ninety-nine — some seven months short of his hundredth birthday — and was laid to rest beside Ada at Macquarie Park. Her stone had read “a wife & mother” for twenty-three years; the words added for him read simply “her husband”, with a footstone giving them both as “Mother & Father”.1429 The 1963 roll matters for that ending: he did not die in a suburb he had merely been taken to at the last. He had been living at 15 Marion Street, Leichhardt, for at least nine years, and probably alone for the last of them.2526 Two photographs survive of the Denistone Road house — the pair of them on its verandah, and Ada on a low wall in the back garden among the hollyhocks. Neither is dated, and neither needs to be: they were at Doomben Avenue in 1943 and here by 1949, and Ada died that April, so both belong to a window of at most six years.30
One thread can now be tied off. This account once placed Archibald, late in life, on Aeolus Avenue at Ryde with his daughter Pearl, on a roll said to list Ada Ellen, Archibald Thomas and Pearl Ada Fanny together. The Ryde rolls sighted since say plainly what that was: 7 Aeolus Avenue was the married home of Pearl and her husband Alfred Norman, held from about their 1932 marriage and again without a break from the late 1950s, and the electoral entries there carry Alfred George and Pearl — and, in the 1960s, two of their sons — but never Ada Ellen or Archibald Thomas. Archibald’s own rolls keep him at 6 Denistone Road and then 15 Marion Street, Leichhardt. The Aeolus Avenue household was Pearl’s; whether her father ever stayed there is a family memory the rolls neither confirm nor deny. Her own page sets out the Aeolus Avenue and Lake Conjola records in full.13
The Generation
The Five Children
These are the children in the treasured studio portrait of about 1900 — the generation that carried the family out of the inner-city terraces and into the northern suburbs.
Ethel carries the direct line — her story continues in Chapter Four. Select any of the others to read their own.
Ethel Ida Violet Robens 1898–1994
The eldest child, and the small girl in the c. 1900 portrait. She married into the Cook family and made a home on Bridge Road, Ryde.
Continue the main storyAlfred Archibald Thomas Robens 1899–1982
The only son — a Methodist minister who spent forty years on the circuits of New South Wales, from the Tweed to the Illawarra, and wore the army chaplain’s collar as well.
Read their storyPearl Ada Fanny Robens 1906–1979
The daughter behind the Cox’s Road counter. She married Alfred Norman of the Eastwood orchard family and spent the middle of her life among the oyster leases and holiday cabins of Lake Conjola.
Read their storyMuriel Isobel Robens 1910–1998
She married the market gardener from the next road over — and it is her house that kept this family’s photographs.
Read their storyLilian 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.
Read their storyThe Record
Sources & References
- 1
Civil registration & census, Archibald and Ada
NSW BDM birth register 1872, ref. 2307/1872 — Archibald T. Robens, 3 September 1872, Sydney, father Thomas Robens, mother Rebecca Robens; marriage register 1895, ref. 5357/1895, Newtown district, which indexes the groom as “Archibald I Robens” and the bride as Ada E. Baldock; and census returns tracking the Seaview Street, Marrickville household. The I for T on the marriage index is a transcription slip, not a second man: the birth entry, the golden wedding notice and every later record give Thomas.
- 2
Bathurst Technical School examination rolls
“Technical Students”, Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal, 8 January 1891, p. 2 (Trove nla.news-article64231396) — the published examination roll, naming Archibald Robens with second-grade passes in Perspective (first year) and Freehand Drawing (first year), and his cousin Charles Mills with a second-grade pass in Practical Chemistry, on the same list.
- 3
Technical College Examination Ledger, 1891
Master State Administrative Education Archive Ledger, 1891 session, Shorthand Manual section — second-grade pass credentials issued to Archibald Robens.
- 4
Golden wedding notice, 1945
“Golden Weddings”, Sydney Morning Herald, 31 July 1945, p. 12 — “Robens—Baldock. — July 31, 1895 at Newtown, Archibald, son of the late Mr. and Mrs. T. Robens, Bathurst, to Ada, daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. A. Baldock, Newtown. Present address, 6 Denistone Road, Eastwood.” The date corroborates a 31 July 1895 marriage against the 29 January given in earlier drafts, and the printed address independently confirms “Denistone” over the “Denison” of one family caption — see reference [30].
- 5
Newtown Police Court, 1907
“Unlicensed Second-Hand Dealer”, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 10 August 1907, p. 20 (Trove nla.news-article238077806) — Archibald Thomas Robens fined 10/- and 6/- costs, or three days’ imprisonment, for carrying on the business of a second-hand dealer at Marrickville on 27 July 1907, without a licence.
- 6
Motor-driver electoral entries
Commonwealth Electoral Rolls recording Archibald, William Wesley and Harold James Fuller Robens in the motor transport trade across the metropolitan and country districts.
- 7
1930 Commonwealth Electoral Roll
Division of Parramatta, Subdivision of Ryde, 1930, p. 89, entry block “Robens” — Archibald Thomas Robens, storekeeper, and Pearl Ada Fanny Robens, shop-assistant, Cox’s Road, North Ryde.
- 8
Postmaster-General’s tender, 1935
Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, Postmaster-General’s Department accepted public tenders register, 21 February 1935, schedule entry 713 — contract for the conduct of the Post and Telegraph Office at North Ryde awarded to Archibald Thomas Robens.
- 9
1936–1937 Cox’s Road residency registers
NSW Electoral Rolls, Ryde Subdivision, 1936 and 1937 — Lilian Alice Maude Robens working as a printer at the Cox’s Road post office premises. An earlier reading of these rolls also reported a listing for Archibald’s father Thomas Robens; that is withdrawn. See references 19 and 20.
- 10
Parramatta intersection collision, 1937
“Overturned Car — Lorry-Driver Fined — Parramatta Accident”, Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, 20 September 1937, p. 2 (Trove nla.news-article106165940) — full report of the Parramatta Police Court hearing into the 9 May 1937 collision. Names Archibald Thomas Robens, “postmaster at North Ryde”, and the lorry driver, Robert Cromp, a gasfitter of Rickard Avenue, Bondi, fined 30/- with £2/2/- costs for dangerous driving; records testimony from Robens, the eyewitness Charles Budin and Cromp himself, before the magistrate Mr Balmain and police prosecutor Constable M. McKeon.
- 11
Macquarie Park Methodist burial index
Macquarie Park Cemetery transcripts, Methodist Section D, Row 3 — the shared gravesite of Ada Ellen Robens and Archibald Thomas Robens, with the “a wife & mother” headstone inscription. An earlier draft of this history also placed their daughter Muriel (Mrs Llewellyn Owen) in this plot; the cemetery transcript in fact has her buried with her husband in the A J Hare Lawn section, Row 9 — see her own page.
- 12
Probate of Ada Ellen Robens, 1949
Supreme Court of NSW, Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, estate ref. B 7751 — the 3 April 1949 death at age 75, the £450 estate, and administration granted 13 July 1949 to Alfred Archibald Thomas Robens and Ethel Ida Violet Cook via proctors R. Thornton & Son.
- 13
Eastwood & Aeolus Avenue electoral rolls
Subdivision of Eastwood, 1949 and 1954 — Archibald at 6 Denistone Road under “no occupation” (see references 21 and 23 for the sighted entries). An earlier draft also carried a Ryde roll said to cluster Ada Ellen, Archibald Thomas and Pearl Ada Fanny Norman on Aeolus Avenue. The Ryde rolls sighted since — 1933, 1963, 1972 and 1977 — show 7 Aeolus Avenue as the married home of Pearl and Alfred George Norman, never a Robens household; the supposed Ada Ellen and Archibald Thomas entries there were a conflation with the Cox’s Road and Denistone Road rolls. Pearl Ada Fanny Robens’s own page sets out the Aeolus Avenue and Lake Conjola records.
- 14
Death registration, Archibald Thomas Robens
NSW BDM death register 1972, ref. 1198/1972 — Leichhardt district, 16 January 1972, age 99, parents Thomas Robens and Mary Rebecca Jane Jeffries.
- 16
The five children’s birth registrations
NSW BDM birth register, each naming the father as Archibald T. and the mother as Ada E. — Ethel I. V., 4796/1898, Marrickville; Alfred A. T., 33090/1899, Newtown; Pearl A. F., 5206/1906, Marrickville; Muriel I., 5785/1910, Marrickville; Lilian A., 39288/1914, Ryde. Read in order, the districts date the household’s move from the inner west to Ryde to between 1910 and 1914. Note also that the 1910 entry gives Muriel first and the initial I. second, as does the 1933 electoral roll; the “Isobel Muriel” of later summary records is not the order either contemporary source uses.
- 17
Sands Directory, 1913
Sands Sydney Directory 1913 — Archibald Robens, Hercules Street. The copy held records no suburb. A Hercules Street appears elsewhere in this history on the 1913 Chatswood electoral roll, where Arthur Leslie and Florence Maud Doust are entered near David and Martha Jemima Doust of Anderson Street. Whether it is the same street has not been established; the connection is offered as a lead only.
- 18
1933 Commonwealth Electoral Roll
Division of Martin, State District of Ryde, Subdivision of Ryde, 1933, entries 3536–3538 — Robens, Ada Ellen, Cox’s road, North Ryde, home duties; Robens, Archibald Thomas, Cox’s road, North Ryde, storekeeper; Robens, Muriel Isobel, Cox’s road, North Ryde, home duties.
- 19
1936 Commonwealth Electoral Roll
Division of Parramatta, State District of Ryde, Subdivision of Ryde, 1936, entries 3727–3729 — Robens, Ada Ellen, Cox’s road, North Ryde, home duties; Robens, Archibald Thomas, Cox’s road, North Ryde, storekeeper; Robens, Lilian Alice Maude, Cox road, Ryde, printer. Three Robens entries and no more. Entry 3687 on the same page reads “Reynolds, Thomas, Roma, Cox’s road, North Ryde, retired” — the neighbour previously misread as Archibald’s father. The federal division had changed from Martin to Parramatta since 1933; the address had not.
- 20
1937 Commonwealth Electoral Roll
Division of Parramatta, State District of Ryde, Subdivision of Ryde, 1937, entries 3844–3846 — the same three Robens entries as 1936, unchanged. Thomas Reynolds appears again at entry 3804, “Roma”, Cox’s road, retired. Thomas Robens had been dead since November 1928 and is on neither roll.
- 21
1949 Commonwealth Electoral Roll
Division of Parramatta, State District of Ryde, Subdivision of Eastwood, 1949, entry 6864 — Robens, Archibald Thomas, 6 Denistone road, no occupation. He appears alone; Ada Ellen had died on 3 April of that year.
- 22
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, 19 Doomben avenue, no occupation; Robens, Lilian Alice Maude, Eastwood, saleswoman. The move from Cox’s Road, and the first roll on which Archibald has no occupation against his name.
- 23
1954 Commonwealth Electoral Roll
Division of Parramatta, State District of Eastwood, Subdivision of Eastwood, 1954 — Robens, Archibald Thomas, 6 Denistone road, no occupation. The same address and description as 1949, and again the only Robens of that household on the page.
- 24
1958 Commonwealth Electoral Roll
Division of Parramatta, State District of Eastwood, Subdivision of Eastwood, 1958, entry 9515 — Robens, Archibald Thomas, 6 Denistone road, no occupation. The third successive roll at that address, and the last before he turns up at Leichhardt on the 1963 roll.
- 25
1963 Commonwealth Electoral Roll
Division of Dalley, Subdivision of Leichhardt, 1963, entry 5101 — Robens, Archibald Thomas, 15 Marion street, no occupation. Entry 5081 places Sarah Ann Rigart at the same number. This is the earliest record of him at Leichhardt, the district in which he died nine years later.
- 26
1968 Commonwealth Electoral Roll
Division of Dalley, Subdivision of Leichhardt, 1968, entry 4804 — Robens, Archibald Thomas, 15 Marion street, no occupation. He is the only elector at that number; Sarah Ann Rigart, who shared it in 1963, appears at entry 4777, 170 Norton street. The last roll entry found for him, four years before his death.
- 27
Sands Directory, 1905
Sands Sydney Directory 1905, p. 402, Marrickville — “Robens Archibald T., fruiterer”, Marrickville Road. The earliest named trade for him after his technical training, and two years before the unlicensed second-hand dealing case.
- 28
An expunged elector at Newtown — unresolved
Electoral revision list, Newtown–Camperdown Division (Camperdown), List No. 2, “Names not objected to but expunged” — “Robins, Archibald Thos., 135 King-street, Newtown, saddler”. The forenames, the surname variant and the district all fit Archibald Thomas Robens, who married at Newtown in 1895 and whose son was registered there in 1899, and saddlery was his father’s trade and his great-grandfather’s. But no other record gives Archibald himself as a saddler, and the list is undated in the copy held. Recorded as a strong candidate, not as an established fact.
- 29
Monumental inscription, Macquarie Park
Macquarie Park Cemetery, Methodist, Section D, Row 3 — Archibald Thomas Robens, died 16 January 1972, aged 99; the inscription reading “her husband”, added to Ada Ellen’s “a wife & mother”, with a footstone reading “Mother & Father”. A photograph of the headstone as it stands today is reproduced in this chapter.
- 30
Family photographs
Private family collection, identified by JK — Ada Ellen Robens with her son Alfred; Ada and Archibald in a garden; 6 Denistone Road, Eastwood, with the pair of them on the verandah; and Ada in the back garden there, hand-coloured. The Denistone photographs are dated by the electoral rolls rather than by any inscription: the household was at 19 Doomben Avenue in 1943 and at 6 Denistone Road by 1949, and Ada died on 3 April 1949. One family caption gives the street as “Denison Road”; the rolls of 1949, 1954 and 1958, and a second family caption, all give Denistone, which is followed here — and is now independently confirmed by the couple’s own 1945 golden wedding notice, printed in their lifetime; see reference [4]. A fifth photograph, of Ada and Archibald with a grandchild beside a motor car, carries the family’s own caption naming its subjects but no date; the car and the child’s age suggest the 1920s or 1930s. Three further images from the same collection are placed in this chapter: Archibald with his daughter Lilian beside a decorated cake, the occasion unrecorded; a group captioned “Lilian, Ada, Pearl, Alf and Archibald”, showing four of the five children with their parents and grandchildren; and Ada with her son Alfred and an unidentified woman on a Sydney street outside Repin’s Inn, datable by the shopfront signage and the fashions to the city’s later years. A further cabinet-card portrait, captioned by the family “Ethel (Etty), Alf and Archibald J. Jeffreys”, shows the two eldest Robens children as infants beside their great-grandfather — Archibald Joseph Jeffries of Bathurst, blind in old age, who died in May 1903; the spelling “Jeffreys” is the caption’s, not this history’s.
- 15
Children’s marriage registrations
NSW BDM consolidated marriage registers, tracking the descendant unions: 1926 Cook (Ethel), 1927 Jones (Alfred), 1932 Norman (Pearl), 1935 Owen (Muriel) and 1947 McMahon (Lilian).
- 31
Alfred Robens as Methodist Church trustee, 1939/1964
NSW Government Gazette, 21 August 1964, No. 99, p. 2646, “After-Auction Purchases” (Trove nla.news-article220341855) — Land District of Lake Cargelligo, Shire of Bland, Parish of Currawong: a 1-rood 5½-perch allotment at Naradhan, offered for sale 25 July 1939, purchase approved to Raymond John Noble, Alfred Archibald Thomas Robens, Walter Whitbread, George Harold Slade and Rupert Howard Grove, as Trustees of the Methodist Church of Australasia, care of the Rev. R. J. Noble, Property Secretary, 139 Castlereagh Street, Sydney. The twenty-five-year gap between the 1939 auction and the 1964 gazettal is in the original notice, not an error introduced here.
- 32
Alfred Robens on the circuits — Commonwealth electoral rolls, 1930–1963
Printed Commonwealth electoral rolls, Alfred Archibald Thomas and Freda Amy (also read “Freda May” in 1936–37) Robens enrolled together at each successive manse: 1930, Division of Cowper, Subdivision of Macksville — “Parsonage”, North Macksville, clergyman; 1933 and 1935, Division of Cowper, Subdivision of Kendall — parsonage, Coopernook, minister; 1936 and 1937, Division of Newcastle, Subdivision of Stockton — 77 Mitchell Street, Stockton, minister; 1943 and 1946, Subdivision of Kempsey — 173 Belgrave Street, Kempsey, Methodist minister; 1954, Division of Cunningham, Subdivision of Wollongong — 58 Church Street, Wollongong, minister; 1958, Division of Bradfield, Subdivision of Killara — 671 Pacific Highway, clergyman; 1963, Subdivision of Strathfield — 31 Carrington Avenue, methodist minister. The gaps between these — Nimbin to Macksville, Stockton to Kempsey, Kempsey through Tamworth to Wollongong — are not yet filled from the Methodist Conference stationing lists.
- 33
Alfred and Freda Robens in retirement — electoral rolls, 1968–1980
Commonwealth electoral rolls: 1968, Subdivision of Leura — Alfred Archibald Thomas Robens, 6 Jersey Avenue, no occupation shown, with Freda Amy at the same address; 1972, Subdivision of Katoomba — the same couple, Jersey Avenue, Katoomba; 1977 and 1980, Subdivision of Pymble West — 6/1068 Pacific Highway, Pymble, the 1980 roll still entering him as “methodist minister”.
- 34
The 1927 marriage and the first circuits
“Social Circle — Robens–Jones”, Newcastle Sun, 28 April 1927, p. 5 (Trove nla.news-article163406759); “Social News — Weddings”, Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, 30 April 1927, p. 13 (nla.news-article137651320); and “The Y.P. Firing Line” by R. C. Barlow, The Methodist (Sydney), 3 September 1927, p. 12 (nla.news-article155358970). The three between them give the wedding date of 26 March 1927 at the Hamilton Methodist Church, the bride as Freda, second daughter of E. W. Jones of “Alwyne”, Veda Street, Hamilton, the officiants (Rev. H. W. Woodhouse, assisted by Rev. R. Finnigan), the best man (Rev. Gordon Wood, L.Th.), the telegrams from the “late circuit at Barraba”, the honeymoon at Katoomba, and the couple’s arrival at Nimbin, in the Lismore district, as their first circuit together.
- 35
Alfred Robens as an army chaplain, 1936
Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, No. 75, 10 September 1936, p. 1659 (Trove nla.news-article232667378) — “Australian Army Chaplains’ Department. To be Chaplain (4th Class) — The Reverend Alfred Archibald Thomas Robens, 19th August 1936.” His chaplain’s service file is held by the National Archives of Australia as NAA: B1535, 731/3/98 (item 369754, Melbourne; open access), and has not yet been examined. He also wrote the obituary of a fellow chaplain and college friend: “Chaplain Gordon G. Wood, by Rev. Alfred Robens, L.Th.”, The Methodist, 8 July 1944, p. 10 (nla.news-article155476447).
- 36
Kempsey Technical Education Advisory Committee, 1946–1947
Government Gazette of New South Wales, No. 102, 13 September 1946, p. 2077 (Trove nla.news-article224792687) — “Alfred Archibald T. Robens, Esq.” named among sixteen members appointed to the Advisory Committee on Technical Courses at Kempsey, to a term ending 31 December 1948; and No. 120, 24 October 1947, p. 2438 (nla.news-article224773190) — his removal from the committee, with two others, and the appointment of replacements, marking his departure from the Kempsey circuit.
- 37
The Tamworth Youth Crusade, 1950
“Crusade for Christ”, The Methodist (Sydney), 16 December 1950, p. 5 (Trove nla.news-article155613269) — the Methodist Youth Crusade Demonstration in the Tamworth Town Hall, “the first of its kind in Tamworth”, organised by “the Superintendent of the Tamworth Circuit (Rev. Alfred Robens, L.Th.)” with Dr G. Wheen of the Young People’s Department; six hundred young people and three hundred adults, a 160-voice choir, and Robens welcoming the visitors alongside the Mayor, Ald. H. J. Varley.
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Deaths of Alfred and Freda Robens, 1982
Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens and Crematorium, North Ryde — memorial plaque (plot reference “397 1K”): “In loving memory of Rev. Alfred A. T. Robens, 13th December 1982, aged 83 years.” He died at Calvary Hospital, Canberra. NSW BDM death register 1982, ref. 8195/1982 — Freda Amy Robens, Sydney district, father Erasmus William, mother Elsie. Which of the two died first has not been established.
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Freda Amy Jones
NSW BDM birth register 1905, ref. 38616/1905, Wallsend district — Freda A. Jones, father Erasmus W., mother Elsie. The 1927 wedding reports (reference 34) name her as the second daughter of Erasmus William Jones of “Alwyne”, Veda Street, Hamilton, with sisters Elsie and Ena as bridesmaids.
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The three Robens daughters
NSW BDM marriage registers: Jack Whiteman Secomb and Shirley Joy Robens, 1948, ref. 10888/1948, Kempsey district; Jack Graham Leonard and Patricia Joan Robens, 1952, ref. 28139/1952, Wollongong district; John Dennis Milne and Brenda June Robens, 1962, ref. 5258/1962, Chatswood district. Patricia Joan Leonard died on 11 January 1984, aged 52, and was cremated at Gungahlin, in Canberra (monumental inscription, naming her husband Jack and children Karen, Andrew and Simon). Her husband, Jack Graham Leonard (1929–1995), a Royal Australian Air Force chaplain who rose to a rank equivalent to air commodore, is the subject of an article in the Australian Dictionary of Biography (adb.anu.edu.au/biography/leonard-jack-graham-27709).