Mary Downer

Mary Downer, Lady Downer (born 13 December 1924) is a prominent South Australian patron, wife of deceased MP and high commissioner Sir Alexander Downer and mother of former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

Lady Downer was educated at Seymour College, a private Uniting Church girls school in Adelaide, where she was raised along with her four brothers. Her father Sir James Gosse was a prominent Adelaide businessman and philanthropist as was her grandfather Robert Barr Smith. At the age of 18, in the thick of World War II Lady Downer, like her brothers before her, joined the army. Enlisted in the Searchlight Battalion in Western Australia she served as a truck driver.

Lady Downer moved to London with her husband in 1964 as he took up the post of Australian High Commissioner. Here she became involved in an Australian expatriate community establishing the Chicken and Chablis Club which remains active today.

Lady Downer has been an active patron of the Mary Potter Foundation since 1994 . The Mary Potter Foundation works to raise funds to support the work of the Mary Potter Hospice operated by Calvary Health Care Adelaide and to support the development of services to the terminally ill and their families by the Mary Potter Hospice through the provision of additional buildings, facilities, equipment and/or services.

Lady Downer was the primary patron of the Barossa Valley Music Festival in South Australia until its termination in 2005.

An article on Lady Downer was featured in the Spring 2008 issue of Barossa Living. http://www.barossaliving.com.au/

References

• The Gosses. F Gosse
• Dynasties, ABC TV, 2004
• Australian Dictionary of Biography

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Name	Downer, Mary
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Date of birth	13 December 1924
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