William Trewin: 'Rhoda Mountjoy is my niece. She has been staying with me on a visit for about three weeks

Stubley became a very rich man, earning himself about £1,000 a week. But a few years later production dwindled as 'the line' ran out. By 1883 the St Patrick was but thinly productive, and other mines forged ahead in output and reputation: Day Dawn produced 20,000 ounces that year. Frank Stubley, who had gambled and given his fortune away, wandered off on his own, prospecting, and his remains were found two years later by a track in the bush. By then the Honeycombes had moved 600km to the southeast, to the mining community at Crocodile Creek, later called Bouldercombe, and 21km southwest of Rockhampton.

The discovery of gold at Canoona, 36 miles northwest of Rockhampton, in 1858, had led indirectly to JH Brady's find at Crocodile Creek eight years later.

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We will never know why John initiated the move to Crocodile Creek in 1884. It was presumably made in pursuit of a better paid job, by the actual offer of one, or because of reports that working conditions and opportunities were better further south. Perhaps some friend or relation, already established in the area, recommended the move. Perhaps a deterioration in the family's health determined it. In any event, the train journey, from Charters Towers to Townsville and thence to Rockhampton, would not only have speeded the whole process of moving, but have been viewed by the eldest of the little boys (Willie was five in 1884) with some delight. After this noisy, dusty and tiring experience, the family would have travelled out to their new home by coach or on horse and cart. They would settle at or near Crocodile Creek for the next eight years, for most of the time at Three Mile Creek.

Crocodile Creek was notorious, as other diggings in other colonies had become, for an anti-Chinese riot.

The first race riot of this sort had happened many years earlier, in 1857, when a group of diggers at the Ovens gold-field in New South Wales destroyed a Chinese settlement and drove out its occupants. Similar disturbances periodically erupted in the gold-fields of New South Wales and Victoria until their bloody culmination in the Lambing Flat riots in 1861, when several Chinese were killed. When the New South Wales government, sympathising with the demands of the European diggers, passed a law in November 1861 that restricted Chinese entry to the colony, the problems went elsewhere. They were based on the simple facts that the Chinese looked and were different: they ate, behaved, dressed, and worked in ways alien to the sunburnt and hairy diggers, who were also jealous of the other race's diligence, industry and high ratio of success.

When payable gold was found at Crocodile Creek in June 1866, within six months some 3,000 people were living and working in the area, a third of whom were Chinese. Once again, their self-imposed seclusion, graft, odd appearance and customs (like opium smoking) antagonised the whites, especially the 'new chums' from Brisbane. In the heat of January 1867, two Chinese claims were 'jumped' by a mob of chums, who urged others to 'roll up and drive the buggers off. The Chinamen were assaulted and beaten off with stones and sticks and their vegetable gardens wantonly wrecked. Their tents were set on fire, and everything they owned, bedding, clothing, tools and provisions, was broken up or torn apart - or stolen by diggers' families, eager to help themselves to what was left. During this affray, several Chinamen were injured, though none seriously. One European, a man named Hughes, had his skull fractured by a Chinese tomahawk. The enterprising wife of Ah Sing, who had a pub, saved the establishment from being wrecked by a thrusting 'a stiff glass of grog' into the hands of the mob's leader 'and when the crowd flocked in the place, she treated them all freely to the contents of the bar; they then became peacefully disposed'.

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The Chinese had some difficulty in identifying their white assailants, but it was established that the riot arose from an initial (and not unprovoked) assault by two Chinamen on Hughes. A petition was organised by 24 Crocodile diggers protesting at the severity of the nine-month sentences. It was ignored by the Queensland government, who also refused to consider a claim for compensation by the Chinese whose properties had been destroyed. However, the local authorities were concerned about 'the strong Irish Mob determined on annoying the Chinese' and in due course a sergeant and two constables, equipped with an iron watch-house, were despatched to Crocodile Creek.

By 1884, when John Honeycombe's family took up residence at Three Mile Creek, many of the fossickers had dispersed, although the hardier diggers still toiled away, encouraged by the recent finds, in 1882, at Mt Morgan, 38km south-west of Rockhampton. First a gold and then a copper mine, Mt Morgan would become the most significant and richest of the many mines in the area. Still in use today and open-cast, it is now some 300 metres deep.

Crocodile Creek was halfway between Mt Morgan and Rockhampton, and the makeshift communities scattered thereabouts were officially consolidated in 1899 and designated as the new township of Bouldercombe. That December, the local paper remarked that 'from a somewhat dreary little mining hamlet', it had changed into 'a lively, well-built and somewhat picturesque bush town,' whose population numbered about 500 people.

Ten years earlier, when the Honeycombes lived there, the 'dreary' hamlet boasted only a post office, a hotel, a state school and a store. The Chinese were still very much in evidence, and although their gardens managed to provide some fresh vegetables in the drought of 1885, they were still resented, and were prevented from trading on Sundays, when all Christian shops were closed.

Three Mile Creek was about three miles from the diggings at Crocodile Creek. Elsewhere, reef mining, carried out to a depth of about 150 feet, took place on a small ridge known by the diggers as Unionville or Union Hill, half a mile or so from Three Mile Creek. Several mines were also established at Mt Usher, when a Mr W Usher discovered a gold reef there. Work on the Crocodile claims was very laborious: boulders abounded, and some diggings required almost constant bailing out. A dredger was in operation there in 1890. But John Honeycombe would have earned quite a good wage, about £2.10.0 a week. The top rate was £3.

It was in this area, part of the Westwood District, that John and Mary's next three children were born: Jane Winifred (December 1885), Lawrence Sydney (April 1888), and Annie Frances (February 1891). One of the children died there, young Frank.

A week after his seventh birthday, on 1 November 1888, he was riding with the driver on a butcher's cart when he fell off. A wheel struck and fractured

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his skull. He died three days later in Rockhampton Hospital and was buried in the town's cemetery. No headstone was erected. Because of vandalism, all marker spikes have recently been removed by the council and stored away. So nothing now marks his early death, except an entry in the Burial Book: 'Francis Honeycombe, male, 7 years, C of E, Section 14, Grave Number 2185.

The Capricornian also noted 'an almost total lack of amusements this week, except that the Prince of Wales's birthday was celebrated on the 9th' in the usual loyal fashion - being observed as a holiday and devoted to outdoor amusements'. There was a Regatta, a day excursion by the SS Dolphin to Curtis Island, and a Salvation Army picnic.

All the Honeycombe children were educated at the (very) Provisional School at Crocodile Creek. A photograph exists of it in the drought year of 1885, when the school was attended by over 100 children. Willie (Bill), who is listed on the school register in 1884, is very probably the small boy sitting behind the little girl first on the right. Little Frank did not go the school until August 1886, and Bob not until October 1888. In the photograph, the straw hats worn by the girls are noteworthy, as are the slats on the badly made roof, and the boys' closet far back on the left.

The headmaster, Walter Mooney, sent a copy of the photo in November to the education authorities in Brisbane, asking for a grant and bitterly drawing attention to 'the structure' and to the closet - 'a true index to the other buildings (?).' He wrote: 'An intelligent community will make many sacrifices to have an edifice in every respect fit for educational purposes, while an ignorant one will be quite indifferent appertaining to the same laudable object.' Eight persons in authority saw and initialled the letter. But Mr Mooney's plea was evidently ignored, a new school not being built until 1900.

In 1888, the year that little Frank was killed, his father, John, was a mining manager (at Mount Peers mine): he is described as such on Lawrence's birth certificate. It also reveals that the out-of-wedlock circumstances of Willie's birth in 1879 had been glossed over by then. On Frank's death certificate, as on other certificates, the date of John and Mary's marriage has been altered to precede and legitimise Willie's birth. It is given as 1878.

John is listed as a mining manager at Bouldercombe in 1889. But he is an ordinary 'miner1 when Annie Frances is born in 1891 - not at Three Mile Creek but at Union Hill.

John's great-grandson, John, was told that John was 'manager of mines in Charters Towers, Three Mile Creek and Rockhampton between 1882 and 1887 and later near Bouldercombe'. This is correct - an accurate oral tradition. But no post was held for long, and the mines were not very productive. A mine manager was more of an overseer then, a supervisor. John's occupation is

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His great-grandson was also told that John 'failed to see that his children were properly educated' and was 'an errant husband'. In more ways than one, apparently. But who and what contributed to the imminent division of John and Mary's family will never be known - what character flaws or neuroses, what grievances real or imagined, what disaffection wrought by circumstances, privation, behaviour or mental stress. It has been said by family members that Mary Honeycombe was greatly affected by her second son's death and that the marriage began to disintegrate from then on. It is said she 'took to the bottle'. But it is also said she looked after her children as best she could, caring for them in primitive conditions, clothing and feeding then, while John spent many hours sway from home - not always at work and not always returning at night. He was middle-aged now: he was 48 in 1890; Mary was 39.

In 1892, the Crocodile Creek school register records that young Willie, as well as Bob and Jane, left the school, Willie in July and the other two in June. Jane, or Jenny, had only been there for three months. Their departure seems to have been prompted by an improvement in John Honeycombe's fortunes - he became the mining manager of the Investment Mining Company at Bouldercombe in the Port Curtis District in 1892, remaining there for over a year.

Presumably the whole family moved house and the children were sent to other schools, to the east of Bouldercombe and in the Port Curtis District, after which John moved again, to Mt Hedlow, which was 14 miles north of Rockhampton. That was in 1893, when John became manager of a mine up there. Called Greek's Reef, it was said in 1882 to have vied with Mt Wheeler for the best yield in the area. Crushing machinery was erected there in the 1890's, but the results were poor and work soon ceased.

Margaret Kelly, John's great-granddaughter wrote in 1993: 'Very little is known as to what type of man John was. What we can understand is that the most unpopular man on any field was a mine manager. He had to make sure the men worked very hard, did not steal any of the gold, and had to make sure that the mine made a profit for the shareholders or mine-owner. It was his responsibility to know the direction of the gold seam. He also in the smaller mines was responsible for the book-keeping, and above all, he had to be hardworking, honest and trustworthy. It can be assumed that John fulfilled all these criteria to some degree, as news of any dishonesty travelled fast and John would not have held any of these positions for long... John was always trying to find the gold at the end of the rainbow. But he failed in the most important human function as a father. He never saw the gold that he had in his children. He neglected them'.

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His three youngest children, Jenny, Lawrie and Annie, had been born in the Westwood District - Westwood being a township some 40km west of Bouldercombe and beyond Mt Morgan. Beyond Westwood, some 155km further west, was, and is, a property called Honeycombe.

I only heard about its existence early in 1989, when Fred Butcher, Jenny's youngest son, sent me photo-copies of pages of a book about well-known properties and families in the area. He wrote: 'There is a grazing property called Honeycombe west of Westwood which I always thought may have been associated with our family'.

How did the property get its name? Was it named, or ever owned by a Honeycombe? I tried to find out.

Although research soon revealed that the property was spelt 'Honeycomb' in the few records that mentioned the place before 1905, this is not too significant. The spelling of odd names was not very stable in the nineteenth century (or earlier) and in documents relating to Honeycombe families, the 'e' is sometimes absent. The fact that nearly all the original purchases or leaseholds of land in Australia were given either personal, descriptive or aboriginal names is more pertinent, as would seem to be the fact that the property is now spelled with an 'e' - on maps, in print, and by those who own it now.

The Honeycombe homestead, 75km north of Dingo, is one of the oldest properties in the area and is situated by the only crossing thereabouts of the Mackenzie River. It was a 'low-level' crossing, which meant that the river had to be very low before it could be traversed. When the river was running well but not in spate, mail and supplies would have to be boated across for weeks on end and carried up the river's steep banks. A bridge was not built until 1958, several miles upstream, at Bingegang.

The aboriginal tribe who roamed the area bounded by the northern arch of the Mackenzie River were the Kanolu, said by Gordon Mackenzie in his book The Big Bend to have been 'good physical specimens, kindly and humorous.' He wrote of the area contained within the river's great bend: 'The long stretches of deep water in the river itself and nearby billabongs, swamps and the network of feeder creeks must have been made for good hunting. The river and creeks teemed with freshwater fish, while the swamps and lagoons would have provided a rich harvest of lily bulbs, turtles, nardoo, etc. In the scrubs and plains there was plenty of marsupial, reptile and bird life'.

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The Big Bend country was first made available - 'proclaimed' - in 1854. Among the early settlers who rode out with their bullock teams, horses, sheep or cattle to make their homes and livelihoods in this wilderness were several Scottish families: the Archers, Beatties, Diamonds and Grahams. Some were initially drawn to Queensland by the Canoona gold-rush in 1858, and among the thousands of gold prospectors who came north to try their luck was the first known owner of Honeycombe, a 28-year-old Scotsman, Peter McDonald.

His father, Alexander McDonald, a Scottish Highlander, had settled in New South Wales about 1824, farming at Campbelltown, southwest of Sydney. Peter, born in 1830, was the fourth of 12 children. When gold was found in 1851 at Ophis, Bathurst, Ballarat and Bendigo, he joined the diggers for a year or so before becoming a farm manager near Geelong. The Canoona gold-rush then brought him to Queensland, where apparently he struck very lucky indeed. For in January 1861 he married Julia Ayrey back in Geelong and then began buying up various crown lands west of Rockhampton as they came on the market. He based himself at a homestead called Yaamba on a freehold property that he named Yemeappo. From there he rode out to inspect and lease various properties, paying the Queensland government up to £27 a year for a block of unstocked land 25 miles square. In 1862 he is said to have acquired 40 such leases, including Junee, Coonee, Columbra, Fernlees (north of Springsure) and Honeycombe.

In his diary on 10 July 1862 he wrote: 'Paid note to Treasury enclosing £27-10-0 for Honeycomb and Marinlia'. This included a £12-10-0 deposit for the 25 square miles of Honeycomb(e) - although the official grant of the lease was not made until 1 January 1863.

Improvements were required by law to be made to every block. In 1863, although such improvements cost Peter McDonald £300, the total worth of all his properties was some £3,300. He was a very rich man before he reached the age of 34.

Another rich man in the neighbourhood, who lived very simply at Apis Creek, an outback station east of Honeycombe and across the Mackenzie River, was a former bushranger, Frank Gardiner.

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An ex-convict, his most famous exploit was the robbery of the gold escort at Eugowra, west of Orange in New South Wales, in 1862. He and his gang got away with £14,000 in gold and bank notes; two policemen were killed. Accompanied by the wife of a former friend - her name was Kitty Brown - he headed north, and seeking some respite from pursuit, as well as some obscurity and security, he opened a general store at Apis Creek under the name of Christie. It prospered, and he acquired a local reputation of fair and honest dealing. But someone eventually recognised Christie as the outlaw 'Darkie' Gardiner. The police trapped and arrested him in March 1864 and took him south, manacled and chained. He was sentenced to 32 years hard labour, but was deported ten years later to Hong Kong and reportedly died in San Francisco in a saloon brawl. The fate of Kitty Brown is not known.

The McLennans held the lease until 1885, when it was put in the names of Messrs Charleson and McLennan as executors of the late Duncan McLennan. A brother of Lawrie, he had occupied Ingle Downs in 1875, and after his death, in 1889, Honeycombe was incorporated in one vast estate called Ingle Downs, which covered 91 square miles and included the adjacent properties of Gordon, Goombleburra, Rockvale, Lorraine and the original Ingle Downs. In this consolidation 53 square miles were also taken back by the government.

The isolation of those of the McLennan family who occupied Honeycombe in the 1890's was virtually complete. They were hemmed in by the river to the north and west and in any emergency there was no medical or other help at hand. But although they might fear accidents of any sort, they had no reason to fear their fellow men: the last of the professional bushrangers, Captain Thunderbolt (prison-escaper Frederick Ward) was shot and killed in New South Wales in 1870; and the robber and murderer, Ned Kelly, was hanged ten years later at the age of 26. Nor had any atrocity as terrible as the Hornet Bank Massacre been committed by aborigines since 1857 - although the murder and rape of aborigines by whites still occurred in the more remote regions of the bush.

Hornet Bank was an outback station and sheep-farming property near the Dawson River in Queensland, west or Taroom. One night, a band of about 100 aborigines surrounded the station bent on revenging the rape of their women by farm-workers and the shooting of their men. Mrs Martha Fraser, aged 43, her eight children, their tutor and four shepherds were all asleep: the other menfolk were out in the bush. At dawn the tribesmen attacked: Martha Fraser and her

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two eldest daughters were raped and then murdered; three of her sons were clubbed to death. All the others were killed except for 14-year-old Sylvester Fraser, who escaped and raised the alarm. Every aborigine in the Dawson River area was hunted down after that. The Frasers' eldest son, Billy, who, being absent, survived the massacre, spent the next year in unremitting revenge, roaming the bush, shooting every aborigine he found. It is believed he killed over 100.

Both were in their early twenties; their father was white, their mother black, as they were. Jimmy Governor, a tracker and farm labourer, had a 17-year-old wife and child. She was white, and subject to more contempt and derision than her husband. This reached fever pitch in Governor's mind after several months of working for a settler, John Mawbey, at Breelong. He protested bitterly to Mawbey about various insults and injustices - as his young wife did to him. Much provoked by her scorn and his humiliation by the whites, he visited the homestead on the night of 20 July with a simple-minded aboriginal friend, Jacky Underwood. The three men in the family were spending the night elsewhere. A brief altercation at the front door between Jimmy Governor, Mrs Mawbey and a young schoolteacher, Helen Kerz, ended with the latter saying: 'You black rubbish! You ought to be shot for marrying a white women.' Governor exploded. He exhorted Underwood to 'bash their brain out!'. Four of the women of the household were attacked and killed by club and tomahawk, as well as Percy Mawbey, aged 14. Mrs Mawbey's 18-year-old sister was seriously injured, but four younger children in the house, all boys, were left alone.