Who is Conway's Mother from The Road from Coorain and what is their importance?

Jill Conway's Mother came from a wealthy family in Sydney. Wheh she married Jill's father, they moved out of the city to her husband's dream...... Coorain. Unlike Jill's father, her mother didn't immediately embrace country life. As an anti-authoritarian, who was hostile toward Roman Catholicism, Jill's mother was an ardent feminist who believed strongly in self-education. She set aside time every evening to read, and kept her children on a tight schedule. Accordingly, she maintained the house at Coorain but maintained sacred reading time for herself each night.
After her husband's death, Jill's mother fell apart..... relying on pills and alcohol to dull the pain of her grief. She tried to keep her husband's dream alive, but it wasn;t long before the family was forced to move to Sydney.