Elyne Mitchell

Elyne Mitchell, OAM (née Chauvel, 30 December 1913 – 4 March 2002) was an Australian author noted for the Silver Brumby series of children's novels. Her nonfiction works draw on family history and culture. Sybil Elyne Keith Chauvel was born in Melbourne on 30 December 1913. She was the daughter of General Sir Henry Chauvel, who was the commander of the ANZAC Mounted Division Light Horse and Desert Mounted Corps in World War I, later famous for the charge at Beersheba.She was educated at St Catherine's School, Toorak. She married lawyer, and later parliamentarian, Thomas Walter Mitchell in 1935 and moved with him to the Snowy Mountains. He taught her to ski, and they had four children. Mitchell became a keen skier and horsewoman – in 1938 she won the Canadian downhill skiing championship, and according to Tom Wright, in 1941 she became the first woman to descend the entire western face of the Snowy Mountains on skis.

During World War II, her husband enlisted in the 2nd A.I.F. and was posted to the 8th Division in Singapore where he was captured by the Japanese. Mitchell ran the property by herself until her husband's return at the end of the war.