Australian Dictionary of Biography

Mollie Taylor photographed at Currango during her oral history interview with Klaus Hueneke.

Courtesy of Klaus Hueneke and the National Alpine Museum Australia.

Millie (Mollie) Ford Taylor (1903–1997), Snowy Mountains caretaker, was born on 5 April 1903 at Blacktown, New South Wales, youngest of four children of New South Wales-born parents William John Marden, sheep overseer, and his wife Melinda Ellen, née Morton. Known as Mollie, she grew up at Derribong station on the banks of the Bogan River, west of Dubbo, where her father worked as the overseer. In 1916, after she had undertaken her early schooling locally at Dandaloo, her father suffered a crippling accident that led the family to move to Sydney, where she enrolled at Burwood Public School. She enjoyed drawing and arithmetic, and successfully earned the Qualifying certificate.

Marden left school in 1919 and worked for eight months as a nursery governess for seven children at Rocky Creek, near Narrabri. Returning to Sydney, she was employed at Grace Brothers and a corset-maker’s office, before taking up a clerical position in 1921 at Arnott’s Biscuit Factory, Homebush, where her sister Gwen also worked. Mollie enjoyed the job and was often one of ‘the chosen few’ (Taylor 1982) selected to decorate the company’s stall at the Royal Easter Show. With a desire to escape the city when she could, and a keen bushwalker since childhood, she was a foundation member of the Sydney Bush Walkers club in 1927.

On 24 October 1934 Marden married Thomas Henry Taylor, a stockman, miner, and ranger, at St Andrew’s Church of England, Strathfield. The couple had met five years before during a sports day at Rules Point Hotel in the Snowy Mountains region. They subsequently corresponded and visited each other once or twice a year during the holidays. Having resigned from Arnott’s, Mollie joined Tom at the Coolamine homestead on the Cooleman Plains with his parents, who had managed the homestead since 1908, initially for Frederick Campbell and later for the Litchfield family.

Mollie gave birth to two sons—Donald in 1935 and Edward in 1936—at a private hospital in Sydney, believing herself at risk of pregnancy complications due to her age. She later described raising them as ‘absolutely terrific … I never thought it was a hard time’ (Taylor 1982). With a stream of visiting friends and mountain lessees, the Taylors were rarely wanting for company. Until the 1950s they lived without electricity and relied on a party line as their main connection to nearby homesteads and towns. Coolamine was accessible only by horseback and Mollie feared illness and accidents, such as when Tom injured his wrist in a fall from a horse in 1935. Horse riding was nonetheless a treasured source of independence and freedom. ‘I felt free, just as long as I had my horse,’ she later recalled. ‘When I got off my horse for the last time, I lost my freedom’ (Hill 1997, 55).

The family left Coolamine in 1939 for the nearby Pockets Hut before moving to the isolated Spencer’s Hut in April 1942. The single-room cottage had no rainwater tank and the closest source of water was 1.2 miles (2 km) away at Cave Creek. Mollie used boiled cow manure to form a makeshift floor that she could sweep or mop. She later remembered that year of relative deprivation fondly. In 1943 the Taylors moved again to Old Currango, and not long after they settled at the nearby Currango homestead, which the New South Wales Department of Lands had recently purchased. With Tom already employed by the department as a ranger to monitor the stocking of snow leases within the recently established Kosciusko State (later Kosciuszko National) Park, the Taylors remained caretakers until they moved to Tumut in 1988. Even after Tom retired in 1969, when the grazing leases in the High Plains were terminated, they were permitted to stay at the homestead under a special private lease.

With a refrigerator and a Volkswagen Beetle, the Taylors enjoyed a comfortable life at Currango. Mollie oversaw her sons’ education by correspondence, although mustering was a frequent distraction for the boys, much to her chagrin. During school holidays, they were joined by the sons of the political journalist Alan Reid, who had met the Taylors in 1943. Following the closure of the Rules Point guesthouse in 1960, the Kosciusko State Park Trust encouraged the Taylors to host paying guests at the homestead, which became a hub for anglers and bushwalkers. With her double-oven Ward fuel stove, a full larder, and a garden, Mollie was renowned for her generous hospitality, offering tea, cake, and scones to visitors. She was also involved with the Yarrangobilly Country Women’s Association (vice-president 1949).

In their later years, the Taylors limited their residence at Currango to the warmer months, spending winter at their house in Adaminaby or with relatives in Tumut. A group of regular visitors formed the Currango Club in 1975 to help the Taylors stay at the homestead and ease the burden of visitors. In 1985 Mollie became the first woman to receive the Man from Snowy River award, an honour she shared with Tom. They subsequently featured on ABC FM’s Beyond Settled Districts, produced by Jane and Phillip Ulman, which won the radio documentary prize at the Prix Italia (1989). Their youngest son, Ted, would also become a well-known Snowy Mountains stockman and caretaker, winning the Man from Snowy River award in 2001. Known as the ‘Matriarch of the Mountains,’ Mollie was described as a tough, resourceful, and gregarious woman with a ‘tremendous enthusiasm for life’ (Voice of the Mountains 1998, 33). Predeceased by her husband in 1992, she died of heart failure on 16 December 1997 in Tumut Nursing Home and was cremated at Wagga Wagga crematorium. Her ashes were scattered near the Round Yard at Currango.