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

Years later, WD Toy told Norma King: 'We went up to the reservoir in all that heat to hear Sir John Forrest declare the scheme open. It was terribly hot that week, every day well over 100 degrees. But what a day that wasl Celebrations everywhere... A murder was done on that day. A fellow called Ginger Sly was shot dead in the back bar of the Australia Hotel. The man who shot him, a bloke named Kennedy... walked into the bar of the Australia and ordered a drink. Ginger Sly was up at the other end of the bar, but as soon as

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Perhaps John Honeycombe was in Kalgoorlie that day, one of the most significant in its history. Perhaps he was even at the celebration banquet held in the tram-oar depot that night attended by about 400 guests. For a year later he is mentioned in an electoral roll for 1904 as working for the Hannans Proprietary Development Company as an engine-driver (mining engineer) on lease No 201. Hannans PD was not in the top fifteen of gold-producing companies, which were dominated by those mining leases at Great Boulder, Brown Hill, Ivanhoe and Lake View. The top company in 1903 was in fact Golden Horseshoe Estates, which produced over 222,600 ounces of gold from its six leases. Nonetheless, Hannans PD had eight leases, scattered down the east side of the Boulder Road.

How did John Honeycombe come to be there? And when did he make the exhausting journey, by sea and by train, from Melbourne to Albany, Esperance or Fremantle, and thence to Kalgoorlie?

He could have been in the Coolgardie - Kalgoorlie area as early as 1897, the year his name is last noted in Charters Towers. But whether it was in 1897 or a few years later, John came to Kalgoorlie when the town's glittering fame reached its height. He achieved neither fame nor fortune, but still pursued them both, still drawn in his late fifties to wherever gold-fever was the most intense, to where there was plenty of work, and where his dreams might still come true.

A young Anglican priest, the Rev Edward Collick, arrived in Kalgoorlie a few years after John. Born in 1868 in Hoxton in the East End of London, he ran a boy's club there before being sent as a missionary, aged 26, to Western Australia. The story is told that in order to acquire a congregation in Coolgardie, he went to Pierce's Athletic Hall on a Sunday morning and took on the local boxing champion, on the condition that if he won, all of Pierce's customers would attend his church. He did - and they did. In 1905 Collick came to Kalgoorlie, where, as the town's rector, he also cared for the aborigines, arranging most famously a 'blackfellows' feast' every Christmas, at the church hall in Brookman Street. There they were served by some of the white townspeople and given food, tea, ginger beer and some clothing. This was followed by an aboriginal sporting gathering, when races were run, spears and boomerangs thrown.

Collick was appointed Archdeacon of the Goldfields in 1912. He also served as a chaplain in the Boer War, and with the AIF in Egypt and France during the First World War.

One day he would bury John Honeycombe.

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John Honeyoombe was in Kalgoorlie from 1903 (at least) until 1907, when he became a mine manager, for the last time, at the small Yundamindra mine in the Mt Margaret gold-field, east of Kookynie. A year later, he was an engine-driver again, at the Jacoletti mine at Marvel Loch, south of Southern Cross. In 1909 he was back at Yundamindra, working as a miner once again.

During these five years the sought-after ore in gold-fields around Coolgardie petered out and the town declined. So did Menzies after 190S. Kookynie, some 70km northeast of Menzies, was a busy mining town in 1905 (population, 1,500), with six hotels, public baths, street-lights, a brewery, and a local newspaper. But two years later the gold ore gave out there; the town disintergrated and died. As did Kanowna, 22km northeast of Kalgoorlie, which in 1905 had a large population of 12,000, with 16 hotels, many churches and an hourly train service to Kalgoorlie. Now nothing remains, except a station platform, signs indicating where streets and buildings once existed, two cemeteries, and a cairn commemorating the discovery of gold there in 1893.

Most of the gold-fields were in various stages of decay after 1905, although some like Marvel Loch and Bullfinch continued to produce some gold until after the Great War. Nonetheless, work would have been difficult to find. John Honeycombe must have had some good contacts and friends, and have been a tough and knowledgeable gold-miner. For although he was in his sixties, he continued to be employed in the mining industry until 1912.

Where he lived until then isn't known, but it must have been at or near his various places of work, in somewhat primitive conditions. Whenever he could, he probably returned to Kalgoorlie (whose Post Office he used as his address in1909) for pleasure, rest and recuperation. He would have stayed in a boarding-house or in a room in some small hotel. At this time, a good meal in a boarding-house, according to AB Facey, cost a shilling, and a bed for the night 1/6.

In June 1907, John was 65. In that year, Arthur Bennett, a future newspaperman with the Kalgoorlie Miner and The Sun (a local Sunday paper) came to Kalgoorlie with his parents. He was nine. He wrote in his book The Glittering Years: 'My first impressions... were of wide, reddish-brown streets and hundreds of homes built of wood and corrugated iron... Kalgoorlie had hardly any trees, the summer sun was fierce, and away from the verandahs of the shops and hotels there was little escape from the heat'

Summer (December to March) was hot, but not humid in Kalgoorlie. The average maximum temperature then was 32 degrees. Sometimes it exceeded 38 degrees for as long as three weeks. Summer nights averaged about 18 degrees and no dew fell. Winter was chilly, with an average overnight

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Bennett continues: 'The town's finest buildings were in the main thoroughfare, Hannan Street. These were a magnificent stone Post Office with tower and clock, and the imposing Palace Hotel - and there was a vacant block where a grand Town Hall would go up. Tram-lines extended along the chief streets into the outskirts of Kalgoorlie, to the neighbouring town of Boulder (a 15 minute ride) and to the Boulder Block, to take the gold-miners to work. The trams had rope frames at front and back which everybody called cow-catchers, though I never saw a cow around in the streets.'

Bennett became a boy scout and a choir-boy, for which he was paid four pence a week. He appeared in the 40-strong chorus of a children's opera, The Sylvan Queen, staged in Her Majesty's Theatre in Dugan St by the Anglican Church community. This John Honeycombe is unlikely to have seen. But he would have seen young Bennett among the schoolboys being marched once a week from the State School to the small, enclosed swimming-pool or baths by Victoria Park, opened in 1900. So keen were they to be first in the water that they stripped en route, boots and shirts coming off, and vest and pants once they were in the building: none wore swimming-costumes.

Another boy who took pleasure in the pool was AN Bingley (Bert), whose father, also Bert, founded the Goldfields Motor Cycle Club in 1914. He wrote: 'What a pool it was. Most of us lived in it, and how we survived laryngitis, typhoid, diphtheria and a few other diseases, I'll never know. It was always jammed full of bodies, the sides were green and the water was always murky except on the days it was topped up (twice a week)... I remember times when wrestlers like Sammy Burmister would delight us by putting on turns, throwing us from one end to the baths to the other... I was almost drowned in the pool twice.'

Bennett also records that at Christmas the verandah posts in Hannan St were decorated with gum-tree branches, whose fragrance when their leaves were fresh scented the air. Bands played in the broad streets, which were wide enough "to turn a camel train in", or a train of bullocks, and crowded with carts, carriages and shoppers. In the cooler evenings there were parties and concerts and raffles: of ducks, wine, hams, beer and cakes. Saffron cake was favoured as a Christmas treat by those of Cornish ancestry. The Bennetts' Christmas lunch included duck, ham, and a Christmas pudding boiled in a cloth and 'sprinkled' with small silver coins. 'We ate it piping hot'. But it was not as hot as it was outside. Sometimes a sudden thunderstorm flooded the gutters and made rivers of the streets.

Sporting activities were many and various. Besides football matches on Sundays, and horse-racing, foot, camel and bicycle races, there was: 'Roller-skating, goat-racing, rifle-shooting, whippets, trotting, hockey, lacrosse, lawn bowls, and not least golf, tennis and cricket... When the motor-car began to become popular (the first appeared in 1902) there were car races on the clay-pan north of the town.' There was also much drinking, betting, and some cheating at these sporting carnivals - possible in the early days, as no fences or

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inner rails lined the dusty tracks. Horses that bolted disappeared in the bush; some races were wiped out by dust-storms.

On Saturday nights the streets were thronged, the hotel bars packed, brass bands played and the brothels in Hay St, at the southerly end of Brookman St were bulging with clients. Fights were commonplace, and so, to a lesser extent, were hold-ups, robberies, muggings and murder. A woman out shopping met a man she knew. 'Good morning,1 she said. 'How's the wife today?' 'Just snapped her neck like a bloody carrot,' he relied.

Most rife was the pilfering of gold from the mines. According to AN Bingley: 'One of the perks, so to speak, among mine's wishing to add a little to their income, was to keep a little of the precious stuff they mined for themselves. There are many fabulous tales as to how they concealed and disposed of it, and obviously efforts were made to prevent their various activities by the gold detection staff. Now and then someone would be set up and the odd prosecution effected, with the usual result being six months jail in Fremantle... No one in Kal took the matter very seriously, and even the law seemed to turn a blind eye to it, as they did with Two-up and the local ladies of ill-fame... Few successful businessmen at one time in their careers had not been involved in some way in such activities. The revenue thus created was of considerable benefit to the prosperity of the gold-fields.'

Prosperous they were, and in the 14 years before 1908, the Eastern Gold-fields, covering some 600 square miles, produced a total output of nearly 1 million ounces of gold.

On 25 February 1908, a tornado and the subsequent downpour devastated Kalgoorlie. Street lights, tram and electricity power-lines were brought down, and shops and buildings wrecked. The high rear wall of the Town Hall, then being built, collapsed in a heap of 800,000 bricks. It was rebuilt and ceremoniously opened in September, eleven weeks after the Town Hall at Boulder, whose population now numbered about 11,000. The festivities surrounding these grand openings in each case lasted a week.

Dame Nellie Melba sang in the Boulder Town Hall in 1908. She was 47 then. Attended by her manager, maid and with two baby grands, she was touring Australia. Before the Boulder concert she stood on the Town Hall balcony overlooking Burt St and sang 'Home Sweet Home' especially for the crowd, mainly home-going miners, outside. Her last visit to the area was to Kalgoorlie in 1914, during a heatwave; she spent the afternoon keeping cool in the local ice factory.

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John Honeycombe probably heard her sing; and if he had the money and congenial female company, he may also have been among the Town Hall audiences that occupied the plush red seats of the Dress Circle and cheered Clara Butt, Houdini and Harry Lauder, the most famous among the many entertainers, musicians, actors, and singers, who performed there.

The town was full of characters and adventurers. Some must have been known personally by John Honeycombe, particularly those men of his generation, who had travelled far and endured much, but lived it up as well as they could, though less often as they aged, and inevitably more sedately.

Who were his cronies? Who consorted with John in the Palace Hotel or in Ma and Pa Johnson's coffee palace in the old delicensed Globe Hotel? The older miners had their favourite haunts and meeting-places, where tales of other times and places were swapped, and local identities discussed.

There was GR Addis, with his jewellery shop in Hannan St and a fine private collection of nuggets; there was Gus Luck, guide and cameleer to many explorers and adventurers, including the Hon David Carnegie; there was Joe Lyons, known as Waterbag Joe, a battler and a prospector, who had worked alongside Paddy Hannan at his find in 1893; there was flash William Carr-Boyd, explorer, who wore a tussore silk suit, played tunes on a gum-leaf, and told tall tales about abos and the outback; and there was Jack Carlson, a Swede, who might have been a millionaire. He was in a six-man syndicate that sold their stake in the Sons of Gwailia mine at Leonora for £6,000. In its 63-year life it produced more than 80 tonnes of gold.

John would have known, certainly by sight, the town's dignitaries, mayors and councillors: Syd Hocking was mayor from 1909-11 and published the Kalgoorlie Miner, whose editor was John Kirwan, later MP for Kalgoorlie. Charlie Cutbush was mayor from 1911-14. The tallest man in the town (6'6!4") was John Boileau, a councillor who ran a chemist's shop. One of the richest, and said to be most handsome, was Claude de Bernales. He came to Coolgardie in 1897 as a mine machinery salesman and became a mine-owner, entrepreneur, conman and floater of many companies, most of which collapsed.

There were many others whom John would have known and who would have known or recognised the old man with the glass eye. But who cared for him? What woman looked at his one good eye, at this clean but slow old man with sympathy, even with love? Who took his coarse brown hands in hers, and clasped his warm white body? Or were those nights long past?

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We hear from John in July 1909, a fortnight before Jane Mountjoy, in far-off Geelong, dictated her letter to Willie's wife Esther, and said of John: 'I dont think he Will trune yeat, so he says.' She may well have heard from him earlier that year.

'My Dear Son. I received your last letter of 28th May all right. I am glad to hear you all were well. So you will have gone down to the Cane Country I suppose by this. I hope it proves a more payable job for you than the work you have been engaged on for some time past anyway it can hardly be worse. Can it? Can you tell me anything about the Battery slimes that lie about the mills at the Towers? Has anyone up there taken on the treatment of the slimes by Cyaniding them? Of course I know all the sand have been treated by that process long ago, but I should like to know if the people have up there taken up the treatment of the slimes, it is a good paying thing if any are obtained. It only struck me quite lately to ask you this. They are difficult to treat so I thought it quite possible the Towers people had not gone into the treatment problem. And I have a friend here who I may say is quite an expert at the game and who would be very glad of an opening to treat any slimes that were payable.'

The cyanide process used to recover gold from the sandy refuse of crushed ore dumped in creeks had been introduced in Charters Towers in 1892. From 200 tons of such sand a profit of 400 dollars might be made. Seven years later over 90 cyanide works were in operation, and more fortunes were won and for the most part lost.

John's letter continues: 'I may tell you they must at least be worth at least 3 cwts per ton anything over that would make them highly profitable. But I fear the Towers people are already acquainted with the knowledge of treating all the slimes that are payable, still if you hear of any you might let me know in your next, for you may depend there is good money to be made for all of us. If I knew of anything like that to come back for I would soon be there, but I dread the thought of returning to the Towers to seek for work which I must do if I come back at any time. I have not got into any steady job yet, only a few weeks in and out, but I have the promise of a good job soon by a friend who is manager of a good mine near Menzies, but it may be a few weeks yet before it is available. I hope you and Laurie will have good luck in your new undertaking [this was cane-cutting and carting]. I suppose I will be better to address this letter to that part. Well I think I have no more to say now trusting this will find you all well, with love to you and Esther love and kisses to all the little ones from your affectionate Father, J Honeycombe, PO Kal. I have not heard from Jenny for a long time but I suppose no news is good news.'

Jenny was John's eldest daughter (Jane Winifred), who had married a teamster, George Butcher, the year before in Cairns.

John had not seen any of his children for as much as 12 years. Although he was now 67, he was evidently still fit enough to work, and as there was no, as

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yet, old-age pension in Western Australia (although it had just been introduced in Britain and already existed in NSW and Victoria), he needed to work to keep himself in whatever style of living he now accepted as his lot.

Nothing of extraordinary note happened in Kalgoorlie in 1909. In Britain, Asquith was Prime Minister and the Liberals were in power; Peary reached the North Pole; Bleriot made the first cross-Channel flight in his monoplane; the Union of South Africa was formed; and Henry Ford began mass-producing his Model T motor-car.

An unusual event in Kalgoorlie in 1910 was a successful balloon ascent, witnessed by a large crowd. When the balloon, filled with hot air from a kerosene-induced fire, reached a certain height, the intrepid balloonist jumped out. Wearing a parachute, he landed safely back on the ground as the crowd cheered.

In April or May, 1910, John must have heard of the death of his sister, Jane Mountjoy, in Geelong. In May, the world learned of the death of King Edward VII.

By 1910, all the alluvial gold had run out in and around Kalgoorlie and the mines had gone deeper. There were now ten major mines on the Golden Mile, deep and expensively developed. But as production costs rose, profits declined; for the price of gold remained fixed. John was too old and too untutored to be involved with the new machines and equipment. He had to find work elsewhere.

At some point in 1910 he struck lucky and obtained a job in the Yilgairn District of Southern Cross.

The Yilgairn gold-field had been discovered in 1887 by two main groups of prospectors. But by 1910 the area had declined and Southern Cross was an exhausted, decaying township. Its fortunes revived however, for a few years when gold was found in 1910 some 23 miles to the north-west of the town, at a place called Bullfinch. The discovery at Bullfinch caused the last great gold-rush. Many claims were pegged, and the many necessary announcements made about them in the weekly newspaper produced an unusual one on the frontpage. A small central paragraph read: 'Owing to shortage of space the news is held over till next week.'

Did John go to Bullfinch? It seems likely. The gold boom launched a plethora of jobs in the region: a town was built and a railway line ran out to it

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yet, old-age pension in Western Australia (although it had just been introduced in Britain and already existed in NSW and Victoria), he needed to work to keep himself in whatever style of living he now accepted as his lot.

Nothing of extraordinary note happened in Kalgoorlie in 1909. In Britain, Asquith was Prime Minister and the Liberals were in power; Peary reached the North Pole; Bleriot made the first cross-Channel flight in his monoplane; the Union of South Africa was formed; and Henry Ford began mass-producing his Model T motor-car.

An unusual event in Kalgoorlie in 1910 was a successful balloon ascent, witnessed by a large crowd. When the balloon, filled with hot air from a kerosene-induced fire, reached a certain height, the intrepid balloonist jumped out. Wearing a parachute, he landed safely back on the ground as the crowd cheered.

In April or May, 1910, John must have heard of the death of his sister, Jane Mountjoy, in Geelong. In May, the world learned of the death of King Edward VII.