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Page 1 of 3 Matilda Methuen arrived at Port Adelaide on Monday 7th November 1864 on the maiden voyage of the 'City of Adelaide'. She had travelled to South Australia expressly to marry her cousin Peter Waite. Exactly two weeks later, on the 21st November, the couple were married at the Woodville home of their fellow Scotsman, pastoralist Robert Barr Smith.
Matilda was a daughter of James Methuen of Leith near Edinburgh, Scotland. Peter Waite, the son of farmer James Waite and his wife Elizabeth Stocks, was born at Pitcairn, Glenrothes near Kirkcaldy in Fifeshire, and just over the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh. He was left fatherless at an early age. After leaving school, Waite trained and worked as an ironmonger in Edinburgh and Aberdeen until 1859, when he sailed to Melbourne on the British Trident, and went on to South Australia. He joined his brother James on Pandappa station near Terowie, worked there for some years, and acquired a thorough knowledge of the pastoral industry. Then in conjunction with Thomas Elder, who was also born in Kirkcaldy, he bought Paratoo station, took over Pandappa after his brother’s death, and gradually obtained interests in other stations. His innovative management of pastoral properties made him a fabulously wealthy man by the 1870s. Peter and Matilda Waite had eight children : Agnes 1866 (died at 13 years), James 1867, John 1869 (died in infancy), Elizabeth 1870-1931, Lily 1873, David 1875, Maude 1877 (died in infancy) and Eva 1880.  Peter Waite with three daughters Agnes (9), Elizabeth (5) and Lily (2) ca1875; Source SLSA: B29466, Photograph courtesy of the State Library of South Australia |  Matilda Waite with two sons David (a few months) and James (8) ca1875; Source SLSA: B29467, Photograph courtesy of the State Library of South Australia |
The family lived at Paratoo on the “Eastern Plains” in the mid-north of the State until they bought Urrbrae, near Adelaide, in 1874.
Waite subsequently demolished the original home to build the existing Urrbrae House, which was completed in 1891. His interest in innovation resulted in Urrbrae House becoming the first private house in South Australia to have electricity and its own domestic refrigeration plant, complete with ammonia compressor and fan. The wall and ceiling papers are the work of the same interior decorator responsible for the stateroom on the Titanic. (This heritage building is regularly open for inspection.)  Urrbrae ca 1890; Source SLSA: B14454, Photograph courtesy of the State Library of South Australia
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