The Architectural Building Journal of Queensland announced that "Brisbane has at last a lady architect... we trust that she will get her fair share of public support".

In August 1924, the year she opened her practice, Elina Mottram designed a block of four flats at Moray Street New Farm for her client Frank Elliot and called for the tenders for the constructed building with specific requirements for reinforced concrete.

During this period, she played the role of foreman of works for her father in support for the first stage of construction of the Longreach Hospital (completed 1940).

She was later employed as a draftswoman with the American Army Engineering Office in North Rockhampton in World War II.

The detailing of the interior joinery such as walls that are lined with v-jointed boards and ceilings of fibre-cement with cover strips are characteristic of Mottram’s domestic work.