Miss (Francis) Mary Fletcher White, the great-niece of Booloominbah founder Frederick Robert White, was a strong advocate in the late 1930s of what would become the New England University College (NEUC), the precursor to UNE. She was also the first president of the Armidale Branch of the Country Women’s Association (CWA), a NEUC benefactor and keen traveller.
Mary made an epic voyage to the UK in 1939, leading a local delegation of members attending the Country Women of the World Conference in London. She later took a Cook’s Grand Tour, collecting an array of stunning art deco travel posters and large railway maps while travelling throughout Europe and Scandinavia.
Image: Poster from the Travels with Mary exhibition
Now the Travels With Mary exhibition at her former home – Saumarez Homestead in Armidale – is celebrating the centenary of the Armidale CWA and the inveterate traveller herself by showcasing a treasured collection of paraphernalia that reconstructs that 1939 overseas trip and another in 1947. It offers fascinating insights into travel at that time, as well as Europe before the outbreak of World War II.
Mary was a member of the NEUC Advisory Council from its inception in 1938 until her death in 1948, but the globetrotter missed its inaugural meeting because she was “absent abroad”. Mary also gifted land to what was then known as the University Farm in 1939, and the first of two purpose-built residential colleges on the campus of latter-day UNE took her name in June 1957.
The Travels With Mary exhibition, organised by the National Trust, runs from 1 February until 31 May 2026 at the 30-room Edwardian mansion Saumarez, which contains many historic objects relating to this arm of the White family.
For further information, go to the National Trust website.
Image: Members of the New England University College Advisory Council and distinguished visitors during the first conferring of degrees, in April 1941. Mary White is in the back row, second from left.
