Rev. John Mathew came to Queensland in 1865 where he stayed for some time with his uncle, John Mortimer, of 'Manumbar' in the Burnett District. He was a teacher in the Queensland Education Department from May 1872 to March 1876, teaching at Dalby and the Normal School, Brisbane. Mathew studied at the University of Melbourne and the Theological Hall, Ormond College, where he graduated M.A. with first class honours in 1886. He was ordained a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in 1887 and took a Bachelor of Divinity degree at St. Andrews, Scotland in 1892. He was awarded second class honours in the School of Modern Languages and Literature, University of Melbourne in 1895.
Mathew retained a strong interest and contacts in Queensland throughout his life, especially with the Kabi Kabi (now the Gubbi Gubbi) and Wakka Wakka people. He won the Royal Society of New South Wales bronze medal and prize for an essay on the Indigenous people in 1889. This arose from his exposure to the Kabi tribe in the Burnett District over a period of seven years when he learnt their language. Mathew conducted more systematic field research in 1884, 1906-1909 and 1913, and even as late as 1923-1924. He went on to write several anthropological works and in 1926 was appointed to the Anthropology Committee of the Australian National Research Council.
Mathew was President of the Australian Literature Society in the early 1920s. He resigned from this office in 1922 after being appointed Moderator-General of the Presbyterian Church of Australia 1922-1924. Mathew's son, R. Y. Mathew, wrote a biography of his father that remains in manuscript form in the National Library and the State Library of Victoria. He is also the subject of a biography by Malcolm Prentis, Science, Race and Faith: A Life of John Mathew (1998).
M. D. Prentis, 'Mathew, John (1849 - 1929)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 10, MUP, 1986, pp 440-441.
