John Mathew began work as a surveyor for Mt. Isa Mines in 1958. His role as a surveyor allowed his prolific collection of Aboriginal artefacts.

Mathew donated his remaining collection to the Queensland Museum in 2006.

Beginning in the early 1960’s, John Mathew started correspondence with Fred McCarthy, Curator of Anthropology at the Australian Museum and J. W. Evans, Director of the Australian Museum. Both McCarthy and Evans wrote to J. Mathew encouraging him to seek out specific artefact types, offered advice on field collection techniques/methodology and requested material from particular locales for the compilation of typological ‘sets’ to be held at the Australian Museum.