Guide to the Papers of Eileen Watt

Biographical Note

Eileen Watt was born on 26 May 1903 at the Royal Women's Hospital, Paddington NSW. At a very early age she was fostered out to James and Bridget Wallace who were childless. He was a Scot, a builder by trade, and she was a kindly Irish woman. They lived on the North Shore, firstly at Willoughby, then North Sydney and later at Gordon.

Eileen was educated at North Sydney Girls' High School, where she topped the State in the Leaving Certificate History exam. She was awarded a Teachers' College scholarship and the James King of Irrawang Scholarship to Sydney University. Here she completed a B.A. and a Dip. Ed. In her final year, 1926, she met and married Raymond Gosford Watt and they had two daughters. Gabrielle was born in 1928 and Camilla Susan in 1938.

Ray Watt became the Secretary for the League of Nations' Union in Australia. He was sent as a delegate to Geneva in 1931, and again in 1936. Eileen and Gabrielle accompanied him on the second visit. Eileen worked most of her married life as a high school teacher of English and History, and latterly Mathematics. After graduation she worked for the NSW Department of Education and was posted to Katoomba High School. During the Great Depression, all married women teachers were made redundant. She furnished their new home in Chatswood with her compensation money. Prior to World War II Eileen taught the psychology of selling to the staff at A.J. Benjamins in Chatswood, and Buckinghams in the City, interviewed women personalities for the ABC, and worked for the Adult Education Department of Sydney University.

Ray Watt's job ended during the war, so he became a newswriter and newsreader for the ABC, and the family temporarily moved to Melbourne. Eileen taught at St Catherine's Girls' College after it was evacuated from Toorak to Warburton in the Dandenongs. Camilla had to go with her, and they only saw Ray on occasional weekends, and school holidays when Gabrielle also joined them from boarding school in Mittagong. Later Ray transferred to the Department of War Organization of Industry.

The family managed to get back into their Chatswood home shortly before the end of the war. Subsequently the family fortunes declined, and Ray was out of work for about 18 months. The League had ceased to exist and the only work available to him in the United Nations Association in Australia was in a voluntary capacity. Eventually Ray was employed by the Pakistani High Commission in the Information Section, as a journalist and ghost writer. By this time Eileen was back in full-time high school teaching, until her retirement at the age of 60 in 1963. Some of the schools she taught at were Abbotsleigh, Newtown Girls' High School, Hornsby Girls' Home Science School and Asquith Girls' High School.

After retiring, Eileen went on a world tour for about nine months, to Japan, Turkey, Greece, Great Britain and home via USA. Ray died in 1967 at the age of 77, from lung cancer. His papers are held in the Manuscript Section of the National Library. Eileen divided the Chatswood home into two flats, and lived in the bigger one, where the family came to visit regularly, until it became too much for her. She moved to a beautiful hostel room at Pittwater Village at Mona Vale, where she lived happily for several years, in spite of having a slow form of dementia. Eileen finally died at the age of 91, in the Peninsular nursing home at Mona Vale on 7th November 1994, surrounded by her two daughters and her grandson and his wife.