Alice Matilda, second of six children of John Varley and his wife Urania of 'Dreamthorpe', Kapunda, married Trevenen B. Rosman, an accountant at Kapunda in 1880. They had two children, Mary Grant Rosman, ARCM, who was to become music mistress of Malvern Girls' College, England and well-known as a composer, and Alice Grant Rosman (q.v.). Trevenen Rosman died in 1889. The family continued to live at Kapunda until Alice was about 40, when they moved to Semaphore.
In 1911 Alice and her daughters left South Australia for England, and took a flat in Bloomsbury, London. Alice contributed to a number of newspapers and journals, both in Australia and in England (see below). Her brother, Hiram Wentworth Varley, became Mayor of Glenelg. An article on Alice Grant Rosman (Lone Hand 1 Apr 1914) says of her mother, 'Mrs A. M. Bowyer-Rosman, the journalist's mother, is well known as the writer of 'Good Bye', which is frequently sung by Ada Crossley, Clara Butt and others'.