Charles Halliley Kellaway, 1889 - 1952

Charles Kellaway was born on 16 January 1889, in the parsonage attached to the pro-Cathedral of St James, Melbourne (Victoria), where his father was then curate to the Dean, Hussey Burgh Macartney. The father, Alfred Charles Kellaway, had been born at Swanage, Dorset, in 1856, of parents who came from Lulworth; but on his seventh birthday, 23 September 1863, his mother had embarked with him for Australia, whither his father had apparently preceded them, to start anew as a farmer in Victoria. The venture cannot have prospered greatly, since Alfred Kellaway, the father of Charles, became a teacher in the State Education Department and thus supported himself through his University course, graduating with honours in history and political economy, before he was ordained and entered upon his main career in the Church. After holding the curacy above mentioned he became Vicar of All Saints Church, Northcote—a parish in the Melbourne suburbs. His wife, Anne Carrick Roberts, Charles Kellaway’s mother, had been born at Longford, Tasmania, in 1854. Her parents had emigrated first to New Zealand, from there to Tasmania, where her father’s elder brother was a well-known solicitor in Hobart, and finally, in 1870, to Melbourne. Her father, Richard Roberts, was the younger son of a Welsh anglican clergyman, and had married Frances Halliley, from whom Charles inherited not only his second name, but also his only ancestral link with the natural sciences; for she was the daughter of a north-country manufacturer who had had an interest in chemistry, and had been a friend of John Dalton. Schooling and University in Melbourne Charles Kellaway was the eldest son and second child in a family of five— three sons and two daughters. He spoke in after years with affectionate gratitude of the puritan atmosphere of his upbringing in the parsonage, and of the self-sacrifice accepted by his parents for the education of their family—secondary schooling for all five, followed by a university course for four of them; an heroic achievement, indeed, even in those days, on a clerical stipend of never much more than £300 a year!