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

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A Wesleyan minister, the Rev Dodgson, conducted the funeral service, and William Honeycombe was buried in the general cemetery at Echuca on 6 June 1876, far from the graves of his ancestors. In time a modest stone, with a triangular carved top like the pediment of a pew, was erected over his resting-place and was boxed in by an iron railing. The motto on it says: His End Was Peace.

The stone tilts now, as if William lay uneasily beneath, not wanting to lie in Echuca, wishing instead to be at rest in his native land.

The previous December he had made a will. Perhaps he was ill. Perhaps some incident, or a death in the vicinity, made him brood about his own mortality. The will was witnessed by William Trewin, a farming neighbour and the brother-in-law of Lawrence Mountjoy, and by a WA Calrow.

In the will, William left all his land, furniture and goods to his son-in-law, the will's executor, Lawrence Mountjoy. Jane received £15, as did his other daughters, Elizabeth Thompson and Martha Chapman. His sons, Richard and John, received £5 each.

None of his children would have attended his funeral, unless Lawrence telegraphed Jane and Richard straightaway, giving them time to get from Geelong and Melbourne to Echuca by train. Perhaps, if they were there, they stood in the pouring rain, under black umbrellas, while the pale earth streamed at their feet, and on the nearby river, beyond the red gums, a paddle-steamer sang its doleful siren song.

If Jane were there, bonneted and in black, her mind must have been awash with images as she dumbly gazed down on her father's coffin -remembering the kind of man he was, and seeing subliminal pictures of events long past, of places and people form a Victorian England so different form the Victorian reality of where she was now.

What would we give now to know what she knew, to see what she saw and remembered? William was a speck in the history of his time, but a giant in this family history. He made the leap across space and nations that gave his descendants a better chance in life.

As his funeral proceeded, a thousand miles away another great venture, which had begun on 18 February at Geraldton, was facing extinction.

been sent to him from Melbourne not to receive the rent. I have so far fulfilled my covenant with the Government relative to the land, having paid the [?] and rent, and also erected a mile and half of fences upon it. I shall feel obliged if you will favour me with an early communication to inform me why the rent cannot be received, and have the honour to remain your obt servant, William Honeycombe... My address is W Honeycombe Wharparilla PO nr Echuca.'

There is no reason to suppose that this letter was not in his own hand. All his children were literate, and William's business as a builder in Bristol suggests an ability to write and draw.

His letter fired a flurry of notes and memos, all dated and initialled, over the next three months, and Piffero's rent was also stopped while the authorities considered the matter.

On 14 April Mr Brook concluded: "Piffero being the first to peg and Honeycombe having made no improvements I would recommend that [the] first notice to occupy issued to the latter be recalled & the necessary excision made out of his block.'

This was ratified and William was asked to return his original application (they called it his 'notice to occupy') for emendation. Mr Brook then asked a Mr Strong to 'prepare a cloth tracing snowing excision necessary from Honeycombe's selection.' This was done, and the emended acreage on his application form, plus the tracing, were finally returned to him on 4 June 1875 from Melbourne.

This was William's written reaction on 21 June.

'Sir, I have received your letter of 4th inst with plan enclosed. I am greatly disappointed at the reduction of my selection from 320 acres to 228 acres 3 roods 33 perches but have no alternative but to submit to your decision. I am anxious to know if I am allowed to select an area of land equivalent to that taken from me viz 91 a-0r-7p [0=zero; r=rood; p=perch]; also to be informed who will refund me for the improvements I have effected upon that portion...'

It was a sizeable piece of land that he had lost, nearly 100 acres, and William cannot have been too happy with the local or Melbourne Land and Survey officials, nor with his neighbour, B Piffero.

His second letter produced a further exchange of initialled notes and comments between the officials concerned.

Mr Brook concluded on 16 July: 'He can apply for the area necessary to complete his 320 acres - the portion excised was inspected by an officer of this dept & there were no impts thereon.'

William was informed of this the following day.

One wonders about the imagined improvements. What did William think he had done that merited a refund? And how did the parcel of land (1OA) that he now applied for happen to be available? It lay on Piffero's northern boundary and on William's western one. Was it because Piffero pegged out a horizontal block rather than a vertical one?

As it was, William paid £3-16-0 for a survey to be made and sent off a printed application form on 15 October, which stated in part that at 2pm he had

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sons expanded the station to just under 3000 acres and their descendants still farm there today, five generations on from John Leitch, and 125 years after he first came to Echuca.

Nor was it for William Honeycombe, who died there in 1876, the last few years of his life riven by toil, by failing faculties and strength, by a failing enterprise - and a territorial dispute.

This arose nearly a year after he heard that his application for land had been granted, and involved the southwest boundary of his selection, where Bartolomeo Piffero had established himself.

Piffero had arrived in Australia in 1855. He first farmed at Hepburn (between Bendigo and Ballarat) and was naturalised in 1864. In 1873, when he was 42, he married Anne Jane Pickens. Their first child was born the following year at Shepherds Flat; their subsequent six children were born at Echuca, beginning with Bartholomew George in 1875. Clearly they were residing on their land by then, probably having taken possession in the second half of 1874.

South of the newly-weds were four blocks, I113, 14, 15 and 26, which were occupied by J and TF Pickens, presumably Anne's brothers. The Pifferos occupied I112.

The dispute appears to have blown up when William moved onto his land, only to find that part of it had been pegged out and claimed by his Italian neighbour. Their argument is summarised in a page of notes, dated 26 November 1874, written by B Brook of the Local Land Board.

'An overlap was make by the AS in surveying this ground. Piffero pegged first - Honeycombe was surveyed first... Refer DS to obtain CLB's report as to improves made on the position overlapping Honeychurch's {sic) selec & also ascertain by whom the improves have been made. Piffero is the first to peg & consequently the excision will have to be made out of Honeycombe's block, unless they will make an arrangement between themselves.'

It seems they didn't. For further notes remark - '5.1.75 Piffero calls attention to his case not being settled... Refer DS. Has this case "Piffero & Honeycombe" been arranged yet?... 26.2.75 Honeycombe complains RLP refuses rent.'

This note was made on the same day that William wrote the following letter to the Minister of Land and Works.

'Sir, On Tuesday 23rd inst I went to Echuca to pay the rent for a 320 acre selection of land situate in Turrumberry [that was how they spelt it then] and was surprised at being told by the receiver and paymaster there, that orders had

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freehold for another 12 years. At Torrumbarry North in February 1876, three of his children, two boys and a girl, were married at a triple wedding.

The Mullers, Jacob and Mary Ann (who was a Londoner), took up their selection in 1871. They had met and married in Adelaide in 1853 and in due course had 11 children, eight of whom were girls. Their farm was called Trowbridge, and was run as a wheat farm, with five acres of orchard and 30 dairy cattle. Mary Ann died there in 1903, two weeks before their golden wedding anniversary; Jacob died in 1916. A creek next to their property is still called Mullens Creek, and Muller's Bridge carries the Swan Hill Road across it.

Of the many Scots in the area who would have been known by name at least to William Honeycombe, there was Joseph Beeson and his second wife, Christina Douglas, who was born at Yetholm on the Scottish border in 1853, a year after Joseph arrived in Australia from Lincolnshire. For a time he had a farm near Geelong. They married at Christ Church, Echuca, in April 1876. He and Christina had eleven children, and although he became virtually blind, they farmed his selection at Torrumbarry for the rest of their lives.

Another Scottish family, the McFadyens, had a spacious homestead on the Murray River, remarkable for a room with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books. The patriarch, David, who had emigrated with his wife and seven grownup and adolescent children in 1852, had been a schoolmaster on the Isle of Mull. When his wife died in 1853, he lived with his fourth son, David junior, his wife and their eight children on their farm near Clunes, until the whole family moved to Torrumbarry North in 1871. One of David junior's six sons, Gillespie, married Jessie Leitch. Her family had a sheep farm across the river at Benarca, and in order to do his courting, Gillespie, known as Dep, stabled a horse in a burnt out tree on the NSW side, which he reached by rowing over from the McFadyen homestead. They married in 1897.

Jessie Leitch was one of the eight children of Archie Leitch, who ran the family farm at Weering, north of Colac, until 1880, when he sold up and travelled north to Benarca with his brother, Peter, to help their ailing and ageing father, John. Again, William and the Mountjoys may have known John Leitch, who farmed at Colac, through their various interests, west and southwest of Geelong.

A native of Kingussie in Scotland, he and his wife and their five children had come to Geelong in 1852. A shepherd originally, working on other men's properties, he bought his own 77 acre farm, with farmhouse, at Weering in 1862. It cost him £180. Three years later he had done sufficiently well to buy an extra 155 acres, which was managed by his sons when he moved north to Benarca. When he died at Benarca in 1883, the sheep station he had toiled to establish in dry and difficult country, subject to flooding, covered nearly 1200 acres. His two

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The reality of the Pearse family tradition may simply be that for a few years in the 1870's George worked on the Roslynmead farm. And who else would have employed him but Lawrence Mountjoy? He presumably lived with Jane and Lawrence Mountjoy, and their care or regard for him may have encouraged his brother, Tom, who was five years younger, to come to Echuca in 1875.

Tom and Annie lived in a bark hut on their Torrumbarry property, and their first child, Thomas, was born there in 1877. The family history of the Pearses tells how apprehensive Annie was of the local aborigines, fearing they would steal her baby. She had more cause to fear the harsh local conditions: the baby died of dehydration.

A few years later Tom bought a 320 acre block, Lot 7, Section 2, fronting the Kotta Road and southeast of the Mountjoys' spread. There he built a timber house. Later on, the land between the two blocks was purchased by the Pearses, which gave them a total of 1100 acres. Here they grew wheat, grazed sheep, milked cows (White Shorthorns) and reared eight other children.

According to the Pearse family history: 'Annie was a strong, resourceful woman... able to turn her hand to anything as the need arose. She milked the cows by hand, made butter and baked bread. (She used) a scrubbing board to do the washing under a large peppercorn tree... In 1900 their timber home was destroyed by fire when one of the children upset a kerosene lamp. In an attempt to get the furniture out of the burning house, the piano became jammed in the doorway, preventing any other furniture being saved... Another house was constructed. This, however, was also destroyed by fire in the early 1930's.'

Tom Pearse died in 1909 from Parkinson's Disease. Annie eventually moved to Echuca and thence to Geelong, where she died in 1944.

Gottlieb Dohnt also came north from Geelong, taking 321 acres of land at Wharparilla in 1875. A Prussian by birth, he had emigrated ten years earlier with his wife, Elenore, and five children. He built a three-room weatherboard house, 20 feet by 12, with a shingle roof and a brick chimney, for £65. Further additions to his property at Wharparilla were two dams, a reservoir, a well, a stockyard, sheds and a garden. They cost him £372. His first year of farming brought him a miserable five bushels of wheat (one bushel equalled six gallons) from 12 acres, and the second year 14 bushels from 19 acres. As a result he had to get a mortgage on his land, and was not able to pay it off and buy the

William v Piffero

Other farmers in the area had their families to help them, or were younger and fitter. Possibly William's neighbours lent a hand, if they could, or if he allowed them near him. Who were they?

In 1876 William's immediate neighbours were Lawrence Mountjoy and his nephew, who farmed to the north of his selection; John Balding was to the northwest; James Ferguson to the west; Bartolomeo Piffero to the southwest; Thomas Pearse to the south; and WS Balding to the east.

By 1880, Piffero and the Baldings had disappeared from the Torrumbarry map - and so had all the Mountjoys by 1895. But Thomas Pearse, unlike many of the settlers, was there to stay. He was also acquainted with the Mountjoys and may well have come to Echuca because of them.

The Pearse family history says that Tom Pearse went to Echuca in 1875. His father, Thomas Butson Pearse, had died in 1862, when Tom was 13 years old. When his mother, Martha, died aged 52 in 1870 the family property, Angahook (originally Anglohawk) was sold, and Tom and his youngest brother, Harry, became coach-drivers for Cobb and Co, on the run between Geelong and Lome. Both are mentioned as 'the regular drivers' in Jesse Allen's account of life at Lome, and, as such, must have been well known to the Mountjoys, who knew their father. There can be no doubt of this.

Thomas Butson Pearse, who came to Geelong in 1844, where he was in business as a butcher, purchased a cattle station of some 4,000 acres at Airey's Inlet in 1852, with a sea frontage of 10 miles up the coast of Lome. The Pearses were not just neighbours, but in the same business of cattle and farming as the Mountjoy brothers.

The eldest of their eight children was George. When his father died, he set up in business at the age of 18 as the owner and driver of a bullock team for hire. After his mother's death in 1870 and the sale of Angahook, George moved to Echuca, the first of the Pearse brothers to do so. For four years, between 1872 and 76, he was, according to the family history, a boundary rider on a property called Roslynmead.

This may not be correct, neither the dates nor his occupation. For Roslynmead, if it existed then, was no more than 320 acres, and had very little boundary to ride. The property was much larger in 1909, when George returned to the district to work.

Bert Facey writes of boundary riders, whose job it was to check the rabbit-proof fence that stretched for thousands of miles across Western Australia from north to south.

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Dick and Bert took 11 weeks to cut dpwn all the trees on 140 acres, working six days a week from sun-up to sun-down. How long would it have taken old William Honeyoombe, possibly working on his own?

As for the burning, Bert said: 'You will want two or three men to help you do this, so each time you go to town, try and make arrangement for them to start, or, if you can manage the finance, get a man just after Christmas. He can work on the ring-barking and post-cutting as well as helping with the burning.' And when that was done: 'Before you start to plough the cleared land, you will have to go over it with a shovel and fill in all the holes that have been caused by some of the dry stumps that have burnt down into the ground... Four horses will pull a three-furrow stump-jump plough... and you will want a drill. A 16-run drill is the best, and four horses will pull the drill with the harrows behind easily.'

Unfortunately for William, the stump-jump plough was not invented (by a South Australian farmer) until 1876. Its blades were able to hop over embedded roots, especially those of the mallee scrub.

It cannot have been easy for old William. It apparently took him the last two years of his life to build his house and dam, and to fence and clear the land. For it was not until December 1876, that a mere 25 of his curtailed 228 acres were under cultivation -18 acres of wheat, five of barley and two of maize. And even by then he had been dead for six months.

Perhaps he was ill for part of those two hard years. But it very much seems that, even at his age, the stubborn old man insisted on doing most of the work on his land by himself.

And in the end it killed him.

settled routine. He had to fence the land, clear it of trees for cultivation, and build a home and a reservoir, or 'dam1.

None of this could he have done alone, especially at his age. Someone must have helped him. But who? Lawrence Harward or some other young man? But the former would surely have helped his Uncle Lawrence, who was by that time 54. Or did William try to manage on his own?

AB Facey's book, A Fortunate Life, gives us a picture of what that work entailed, although he is writing about the wheatlands in Western Australia, east of Wickepin, and about the work he did in 1911 when he was 17.

Bert Facey was employed by Dick Rigoll then and advised Rigoll how to set about improving his 3,000-acre lease.

'First we should get a permanent water supply on the property,' said Bert. Up to then Dick Rigoll had been carting water from a dam about four miles away. So they built their own dam, using a single-furrow garden plough and a quarter-yard scoop chained to three horses. This took them four weeks; the dam would fill up when it rained.

William, we know, constructed a reservoir 25 feet by 16.

Then Bert and Rigoll fenced off an area of grassland for the horses, running two strands of barbed wire between trees and posts: this was called a 'lightning fence'.

Next they built a house. Up to then the Rigolls (Dick had a wife and three children) had been living in tents. The house that Bert Facey devised for them had two 10' x 12' rooms and a 12" x 24' living-room and kitchen. The walls were of bush timber lined within with hessian, and the roof was of corrugated iron. The chimney was made of granite rocks and cement. Four glass windows and proper doors were the final refinements, and the walls were whitewashed inside and out. This took Bert and Dick some three weeks to build.

William's house, as described by his son-in-law, Lawrence, in 1876, was 24' x 12'. Its two rooms were made of weatherboard, red gum and softwoods; its chimney was brick.

It was probably very like the house that Bert Facey's uncle had built in 1902: wall-poles in their hundreds were cut from bush timber and set side by side in trenches three feet deep - clay filled in the gaps; the timbered roof was thatched with the long grassy spines or leaves of the blackboy tree; and kangaroo skins curtained the doorways. The furniture consisted of a large table and two benches made of bush timber. Every daytime activity, there or at Echuca, was attended by pestering mosquitos and flies.

The last major labour was to clear the land for cultivation.

Bert advised Dick: 'During the summer months, that is December and January, get as much ring-barking done as you can.'

This meant chopping trees that were six inches to a foot thick down to waist height, knocking the bark off each stump, and stacking the pieces around it. Both stump and bark were left to dry out, as were smaller trees and scrub, which were cut right down to the ground. The biggest trees were left for the

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Wharparilla and he says at that time there were a few selectors along the Murray, but the country was all open, there being only one fence, the boundary between Wharparilla and Torrumbarry, and the first crop he saw was grown by Mr Braund in 1872. And at that time there was only two bark Shanties along the Swan Hill Road, between Echuca and the Terricks, one was kept by Mr Peppernell which was just opposite where the Wharparilla North State School now stands, and the other was kept by Mr Aspinall which is now the property of Mr F Muller And the most to be seen in those days were mobs of Kangaroos and Emus, which were very plentiful, and he says he remembers four Hotels in Echuca, and he stayed at the Echuca Hotel which was built mostly of rough split timber, and the Shamrock Hotel was built of the same kind of timber. In 1870 was one of the biggest floods in the Murray ever known.'

The school's centenary booklet contains some other pieces of information that add colour to the few years that William Honeycombe lived there.

'Crops of ambercane and saccaline were grown near the present junction of the Wharparilla and Serpentine roads. These crops sheltered foxes, which were hunted by local farmers and their dogs... As early as 1871 hare hunts were organised to help raise money for the districts schools and local charities... Dances were popular meeting-places, with dances often organised when the moon was high, as travelling with horses, or by foot, was easier... Mr F Kirchhofer came from Switzerland, bought his land, and had 3/6 left in his pocket... 1875 was a "good year." A school was established in the district and crops were good - 20 bushels of wheat were taken off at Braunds.'