painter, was one of the seven children of Major Edward Darvall (d.1869) and his first wife Emily Godshall Johnson (d.1840), with whom Edward had eloped in 1805. Major Darvall retired from the army and after 1806 was resident at various locations in Yorkshire; Eliza was born in York on 29 December 1819. In the 1830s the family moved to France and lived in the Château de Capécure at Boulogne, described by the teenage Eliza in indifferent verse. There she acquired a good knowledge of French, and since her elder sister Emily Mary ( Barton ) was tutored in Greek and Latin, probably some classical education also.

In 1839 the Darvall family migrated to New South Wales. Eliza’s brother Sir John Darvall and his wife arrived in August 1839; Eliza, her parents, two other brothers and two sisters reached Sydney in the Alfred early in January 1840. Eighteen days earlier, on 20 December 1839, Henry Herman Kater, a friend of the family, arrived in his chartered ship the Euphrates , bringing substantial capital, stallions, mares and cattle, having previously flirted with Sandhurst and the medical school at Cambridge. Six months later, on 30 July 1840, Eliza Darvall and H.H. Kater were married. Eliza’s mother died the following year; her father settled at Ryedale and lived on until 1869

Henry and Eliza initially lived at the fine estate of Bungarribee, between Parramatta and Penrith, but in 1842 Henry was 'all but ruined’, sold his stock and moved to Caleula beyond Orange, where in 1843 he built a steam flour-mill. By 1846 he had diversified into cloth-making. In 1856, the year the cloth-mill closed, Eliza Kater completed a fine oil painting of the homestead and mill building beside Caleula Creek (p.c.). By this time the Katers had had six children, three still living: Henry Edward, Edward Harvey and Emily Mary. There were three subsequent children: Laura Georgina, Mary Frances (who also painted) and Alice Eliza. In addition to assisting in the running of the property and the woollen-mill, where she tailored at least one suit for her husband, Eliza Kater seems to have given the children their initial education. She took a wide and intelligent interest in literature, in French and English, in Darwinism and in botany. Her only other painting known to survive is a watercolour floral decoration probably painted in 1864 (National Library of Australia).

Her husband died in 1881, but Eliza lived on until 1909. Like her father and her two married sisters, Mrs Robert Barton of Boree Nyrang and Mrs Arthur Templer of Narrambla (both properties near Orange), she died in extreme old age.

Writers:

Jack, R. Ian

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011