Adolphus Peter Elkin was born on 27 March 1891 in West Maitland, New South Wales. He was an Anglican clergyman and professor of anthropology at the University of Sydney. He died 9 July 1979.

Emily Caroline Watson was born in Manchester in 1899, she moved to Australia in the 1920s and became involved in the theatre, first in Brisbane and then in Sydney. During this time, she used her mother's maiden name and was known as Carrie Tennant. In 1929, Caroline married Francis Kelly and took his surname. She founded the Community Playhouse, the first theatre in New South Wales devoted to producing Australian drama, in 1929, followed by the Play Society in 1931. She edited The Community Magazine: Official Magazine of the Community Play-house from 1930 to 1931. In the 1930s she enrolled in a Diploma in Anthropology at the University of Sydney and went on to conduct anthropological fieldwork in Aboriginal communities at Fraser Island and Cherbourg in Queensland and at Burnt Bridge in New South Wales. During the Second World War she began a major survey of non-British settlement in Australia for the Commonwealth Government, a project that continued until the late 1940s. Towards the end of her working life, she served as a consulting anthropologist to the State Planning Authority of New South Wales. Caroline Kelly died on 1 September 1989 in Kyogle.

Francis Angelo Timothy Kelly was a copywriter, editor and advertising agent born in England on 13 May 1985. He married Emily Caroline Watson on 23 January 1929. He worked as a copywriter for Ferguson Advertising Co. Ltd, then as an editor of Health and physical culture magazine, and later as an advertising agent. He died in Sydney on 20 September 1964.