PAQUITA PARK

Behind the boat shed on the Sir Douglas Mawson Lake in Mawson Lakes is a park called Paquita Park, named in honour of the wife of Douglas Mawson.

So what's the story behind Paquita?

Francisca Adriana (Paquita) Mawson OB (nee Delprat, 1891-1974) came to Australia with her family in 1899, a year after her father Guillaume Delprat, became General Manager of the Broken Hill Company.

Paquita attended school in Broken Hill and Adelaide before studying piano and singing at the Elder Conservatorium of Music.

She was 17 when she met geologist and explorer Douglas Mawson who was an associate of her father. They were engaged within a year and married in 1914, a month after Mawson’s return from the Australasian Antarctic Expedition.

During the first World War, Paquita relocated to England where she assisted Mawson in his work for

the Ministry of Munitions and where the second of their two daughters was born.

Settling in Adelaide after the war, Paquita worked for organisations such as the Mothers and Babies Health Association and the Australian Red Cross Society and was equally prominent in the city’s social and cultural life.

She was appointed an Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau in 1946 for her work with Dutch refugees during World War 2: and was awarded an OBE in 1951.

She also wrote and published two books - biographies of her father, A Vision of Steel (1958) and her husband, Mawson of the Antarctic (1964). ED