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

Fires continued to be annual events in the town for many years, and the Fire Brigade and its members were well-employed as well as well-esteemed. Before the First World War the town had five fire-stations, centred on the one in Bow Street, and the Fire Brigade Ball, a fancy-dress gathering, was the social event of the year.

A family event was the marriage of Mabel Honeycombe and Sam Kettle in January 1925 - a few months after her father died and a month after her nineteenth birthday; Sam was 21. Mabel was glad to leave home, to have a little place of her own, a quiet place where she could care for her man, undisturbed by her mother's sharp tones, by her younger brothers' boisterous behaviour, and by the anguished dying of her father.

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In 1925, when young Bob was 18, he was called up for military training, which was then compulsory for a year. Leaving his job as a railway porter, he was posted as a cadet to the garrison in Townsville, where he served with 116 AGA (Australian Garrison Artillery), based at Kissing Point. They had two old guns.

Bob spent a year as a gunner, and discovered he was a crack shot with a rifle. 'At 300 yards I could get a possible. That means dead on target' The training was 'very tough, very hard,' and was carried out by sergeants and others who had survived the First World War. Particularly fierce, it seems, were some English warrant-officers - 'they were very strict.'

Nonetheless, Bob found he had a liking for things military, for responsibility, order and authority, similar qualities he had also found in his employment on the railways. For the next 20 years his interests in soldiering and steam trains would complement each other.

After his year with the AGA he was transferred to B Company, 31 Battalion, at Charters Towers, and became a part-time soldier, most of his holidays being spent on further training, in bivouacs and barracks. By the time he was 21 he was an Acting CSM, and when given the choice of opting out or staying on, he decided on the latter. This was in 1928. He gained his commission as a lieutenant in January the following year (although his appointment was not confirmed until October 1936), and when the Labour Government scrapped all defence training in 1930, he went on the Reserve List. But he missed his soldiering. To fill the gap he joined the QATB in Charters Towers (the Queensland Ambulance Transport Board), which had been formed way back in 1900. A voluntary organisation, and self-supporting (depending on donations and fund-raising enterprises), it had become motorised after the First World War.

In the meantime, Bob's full-time career with the railways steadily advanced. Me took on a good deal of relief work, his first task of this sort being to stand in for a station-mistress who had gone sick at Kajabbi, 60 miles north of Cloncurry. This station was not only at the end of the line, it was also at the back of the outback beyond. He was there for three months, and swiftly learned the basic business of running a station. Later, he learned the morse code. The railway used to transmit messages down the line in morse - they had no telephones then. This special skill made him particularly useful, despite his youth, as a relief night officer, and as a staff officer and station master over the next few years.

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From Kajabbi he returned to Townsville. Then it was on to Pioneer, to Maorossan, and then to Balfes Creek and Pentland, both west of Charters Towers, to where he would eventually be posted in 1934.

At Charters Towers, trains used to be searched a mile away from the station by a policeman and some of the railway staff. Vagrants and travellers without tickets were apprehended, given one or two days in jail (with free meals) and advised to leave town on another train. Drunks were often a nuisance, and a danger to themselves. One such was discovered in a railway yard: he had somehow acquired or stolen a case of four dozen large bottles of beer and had managed to empty 17 bottles before passing out. He had to be hospitalised as, when found, he was covered in biting bull-ants.

Bob was fortunate to have a job in the 1930s. Thousands were out of work. Following the Wall Street collapse in 1929 in America, the price of Australian exports had halved. Spending, investment, and overseas borrowing were drastically cut, and by the middle of 1932, the worst year of the Depression, about one in four of the work-force was unemployed. There was a desperate search for new gold-fields, mainly in the west, and old ones were revived. But the greatest lure in these times of trouble was the dream, now made fact by many, of 'going home'. Thousands of Australians abandoned the homelands of their emigrant ancestors and sailed for Europe. For five successive years, more people left Australia than arrived there. No Honeycombes, were, however, among them.

Bob was content to remain in Charters Towers, which received its first radio station and electric light in 1931. His family's connection with the town, and his familial expectations, were sealed when, on 22 September, 1934, he married Esther May Sellars in St Paul's Church; he was 27.

Esther was the daughter of Alexander Sellars, who had designed, built and operated the largest cyanide works in the Towers, at Millchester. Gold was retrieved in those days from the waste of gold-mines through a process known as cyanidation, and in the 1930s Esther's father salvaged $20,000 of gold from an abandoned mine (No 2 West Imperial) which he had once discovered. Born at Canterbury in New Zealand in 1875, Alex Sellars came to Australia when he was 16, working as a clerk, a digger, a ringer and cattleman until his fortunes improved.

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Brother Bill, who was now 24, was working as a bank clerk. In September 1936, in Charters Towers, he married Nellie Treweeke Vickery. Their first child, a boy, was still-born in April 1942. They had three other children, all girls, including the first set of twins born to a Honeycombe in Australia, Margaret and Janet, who were born in November 1943.

Bill was more musical than his brothers, but, according to Mabel, 'he didn't have a voice.' So he learned to play the mandolin. His wife, Nellie, played the piano; she taught him the rudiments of piano-playing and then he went to a music teacher. Bill and Nellie used to visit the Kettles, who also had a piano, and they would have 'a bit of a sing-song, a bit of fun.'

Now that Don as well as Bill was in full-time employment, Bob was relieved of virtually all the financial burdens he had sustained since his father's death. But in 1936 he took on another. He helped in the building of a house at 100 Towers Street for his mother, Lena. It cost £240, and became his home after his mother's death. Some of the timbers came from the defunct Sellheim Meatworks, where he had worked as a boy.

As if this was not enough activity, he revived his military career, which had been dormant for six years. In 1935, with the help of two other lieutenants, Jim Slattery and Jack Chappell, and the backing of the CO of 31 Battalion, Major North, B Company was reformed at Charters Towers. It was led by Captain Saxby, whose main civilian occupation was as headmaster of the State High School. Bob Honeycombe went on a machine-gun course in Townsville in January 1937, and in due course became the OC of the company's Vickers machine-gun platoon.

Esther became pregnant early in 1939, and some six weeks after the start of the Second World War, Bob's first child was born in Townsville, on 21 October.

He and Esther had gone to stay there when B Company was mobilised. Later, Bob remembered: 'I was in camp and my wife was taken to hospital at ten that night. I was called to the hospital about six the next morning and the child had just died. The baby had been baptised and called Pamela: she lived for six hours. The nurse showed me the baby. We lost two more after this, and my wife had one miscarriage; that was just after the war.' So Bob and Esther never produced any heirs.

B Company may have been mobilised, but even as a local militia its services were for a while not much in demand. For Australia was slow to enter this war. There was a general desire to contribute, to play a part worthy of those who had fought in the Great War. But there was also a wish for more 'equality of sacrifice' and for greater independence of command. Much was discussed by the military authorities, though little that was well organised was done for a year, apart from the sending of the Second AIF to the Middle East. Australian forces

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took part in General Wavell's offensive in North Africa early in 1941, and in April they were resisting the German invaders in Greece. They were then involved in Syria. In Africa, Tobruk was besieged.

In October 1941, aged 34, he enlisted at the military camp at Sellheim for war service; he and Esther were now living at Ryan Street in the Towers. In November he was taken on the strength of 31 Battalion.

Also in October, following the resignation of the Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, Labour, under John Curtin, took up the reins of government. In Opposition, Curtin had maintained that Australian troops should be withdrawn from the Middle East to strengthen defences nearer home. Now he advocated that the British war effort concentrated on the Mediterranean should be afforded Australia's support. But he also said, writing in December in the Melbourne Herald: 'Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links of kinship with the United Kingdom.' This was prompted by the Japanese attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbour on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Until then, few had taken seriously any threat from Japan, thought to be technologically second rate and its people physically inferior. The RAF in the Far East even thought that the night vision of Japanese airmen was genetically defective.

The fatal prelude to a series of wartime disasters and defeats in 1941/42 was the sinking of the Australian cruiser, HMAS Sydney in November. 480 kilometers off Carnanvon, she was attacked by a German raider, the Kormoran, flying a Norwegian flag. Both ships sank, the Sydney with her full complement of 645 men. The news of this dire event was not published in the papers until 1 December - HMAS SYDNEY MISSING, HER LOSS PRESUMED.

Then, on Sunday, 7 December, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. Singapore was bombed. The British battleships Repulse and the Prince of Wales were sunk. Malaya was invaded and the Philippines overrun. Hong Kong surrendered on Christmas Day.

For the first time the Australians realised how vulnerable their country was to invasion, how empty, vast and ill-defended. Their eyes turned with sharper interest and diminishing disbelief to what was happening and what might happen beyond the Arafura Sea. On 9 December, the Governor-General, Lord Gowrie, announced that Australia was at war with Japan.

Even as far away as Albany, on the south coast of Western Australia, airraid precautions were taken. Connie Miller wrote in her biography Memory Be Green: 'Sandbags were high-piled before boarded-up shop windows in Perth, Fremantle and other centres. In public parks and schoolyards and backyards slit trenches appeared. And to conserve power supplies, daylight saving began. Civilians were issued with identity cards and with ration books (containing tear-out coupons), for in addition to those imposed on petrol and newsprint, restrictions were now placed on clothing, footwear, meat, butter, sugar and tea.'

At night there were black-outs, and on moonless nights people walked cautiously about with downward-pointing torches suitably dimmed.

On 30 January 1942, the British and Allied forces on the Malaysian mainland, those that were able, withdrew across the Johore causeway into Singapore. Parts of the causeway were blown up. Further south, one of the Qantas Empire Airways' flying-boats, the Corio, on a flight from Darwin to Surabaya in Java to pick up refugees, was attacked by seven Japanese fighters off Timor and brought down in flames. Five of the 18 people on board survived, after a three-hour swim to the shore; one of them was the captain, AA Koch, wounded in the leg and an arm.

Singapore surrendered a fortnight later. Four days after that, the Japanese landed in East Timor, and a large Japanese naval task force off the coast of Timor launched a Pearl Harbour style of attack on Darwin. On 19 February, a bright and sunny morning, over 200 Japanese bombers, dive-bombers and fighters headed southwards, wave after wave, across the dark-blue Timor Sea.

Captain Koch was recovering in the Darwin Hospital from his injuries. 'There was practically no warning,' he said. 'I heard the sirens and the roar of the Japanese planes almost simultaneously... Three [bombs] landed very close. The walls shook and pieces of the ceiling fell in. One of the bombs had hit a wing of the hospital... After the first wave of bombers had passed I decided to make for the beach. I could only just walk... Some of the Jap machines were diving low and machine-gunning buildings. I could hear the crunch of bombs in other parts of the town.'

Two other QEA captains, Hussey and Crowther, managed to take off in the flying-boat, Camilla, minutes before a blazing ship at the wharf blew up.

Nine ships in all were sunk or destroyed and 13 badly damaged; two Catalinas sank in their moorings and many buildings were hit. The RAAF aerodrome was wrecked. That evening the Camilla returned to Darwin, and having collected a load of passengers, including Captain Koch, set off for Sydney at dawn the following day. 243 people died that morning and over 300 were injured.

The news of the attack was received down south with some shock and shivers of fear - the Japs were coming!

In the north, this seemed more than likely. There, evacuees from the Indonesian islands were adding to the alarm. Broome was plagued with them, as well as with flies, mosquitos and dengue fever.

The operational chief of QEA, Captain Lester Brain, noted in his diary: 'All the evacuees are anxious to push on from Broome as quickly as possible... Most of the locals are very jittery and drinking heavily.' Captain Brain was organising one of the rescue services of planes that picked people up from islands like Java and flew them south, to Broome and then on to Port Hedland or Perth.

Over 7,000 people were evacuated through Broome; and on the morning of 2 March, 11 days after the attack on Darwin, 15 assorted flying-boats, mainly

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All the flying-boats were destroyed, as well as six planes at the aerodrome. Blazing fuel-oil spread over the sea. Military and civilian personnel tried to save their charges, as local whites and aborigines panicked, some fleeing inland. Captain Brain, ill with fever, managed to get a rowing-boat into the water, assisted by another man. They rowed out to the nearest burning aircraft and to people thrashing about in the sea. They rescued a woman and her baby, a boy and three exhausted men; four others clung to the side of the boat. With difficulty they rowed back to the mangrove beach.

Another QEA pilot, Captain Ambrose, was standing on a jetty when the Japanese attacked, as were his 25 passengers while his flying-boat, the Corinna, was refuelled.

He wrote later of the 'desperate efforts made to save personnel from drowning or being burnt to death as they struggled to escape from spreading, flaming fuel, pouring from holed tanks... A Liberator bomber took off just as the raid began but fell a blazing wreck into the sea about eight miles off the coast... The sole survivor, a US Army sergeant, swam ashore 30 hours later. Seventy people were brought ashore, but many were already dead, and few had hope of survival due to extensive third degree burns.'

More than 80 people died; many were never identified.

The following day, Captain Brain wrote in his diary: 'The town is almost deserted this morning. Many people have packed their belongings and moved out permanently, heading south in a so-called "land-convoy". Actually their convoy is a nervous rabble and includes a number of American deserters.' To Brain's disgust, many of the 'more responsible citizens' also moved out 'for the day1. He wrote: 'I have always credited the man outback with possessing more moral courage than city folk. The result was that the town was undefended... and practically deserted, except for the American troops awaiting evacuation by air.1

These had all left by 5 March, and three days later, Brain and his staff were flown out to Perth, which had become 'a bottle-neck, with people streaming in by air and sea, and all rail services to the eastern states booked out for weeks ahead... The streets are crowded with men, mostly in uniform - Americans, Dutch, English and Australian... Many are without equipment and belongings. They are like a forgotten legion, without money, not knowing where they are heading for. Each of the services... is claiming priority for its own.'

Thousands fled to the imagined safety of the east and south, away from what seemed like imminent attack, if not invasion. Then Wyndham and Port Hedland were also bombed.

A kind of panic ensued: the Japs were really coming! As far south as Adelaide, air-raids were expected: public buildings were sand-bagged, shelters built and black-outs ordained. In the event, all that happened was that some ships and buildings were damaged in Sydney Harbour in a daring attack by five

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Connie Miller, then 37, wrote later: 'By early 1942 Albany was severely war-conditioned. The town was completely blacked-out at night; it had air-raid trenches by the score, barbed-wire entanglements along every accessible beach front, and on the seaward side of Mount Clarence the forts bristled with guns. Normally a modest 4,500, Albany's population had doubled overnight. A United States' supply ship bound for Guam was the first of a whole fleet of supply ships, submarines, and submarine tenders, mine-sweepers and seaplanes to take refuge in Princess Royal Harbour... In "gob" caps and ultra-neat uniforms young men with fair complexions and crew-cut hair spoke cheerfully to passers-by; they intrigued everyone with their long-sounding vowels: "ceement", they said and "Melb-o-r-n-e", with the accent on the second syllable, and "Maam" and a thousand other odd words that we began not only to understand but to use ourselves.'

Air-raid precautions were also taken in Charters Towers. 'We had our little trench in the back yard', said Mabel. 'The siren goes - we were in the trench. But it never worried me.'

Meanwhile, Bob Honeycombe had been put in charge of D Company (Bowen and Proserpine) at Miowera Camp. The Company had orders to function as a mobile reserve, covering 70 miles of coast there, from Rollingstone to Giru. Said Bob, with an ironic smile: 'If a landing force came, it was my job to destroy it!'

It would have been a fatal and impossible task - one company, about 100 men, defending 70 miles of coastline against a mighty invasion force. But that force was directed elsewhere, and the Japanese made their last major landing in New Guinea, in January 1942.

Port Moresby was bombed in May; but it was never taken, although Japanese troops came within 30 miles of the town, in September. By November 1942, Kokoda was reoccupied, and all Japanese resistance was crushed within three months. The Japanese advance was stemmed and Australia, as it seemed, was saved.

Bob remained in Townsville until after the naval-air battle of the Coral Sea early in May 1942, which was followed early in June by the Battle of Midway Island. This American victory turned the advancing Japanese tide in the Pacific. When Bob left Townsville, Esther returned to Charters Towers to live with her mother.

There, she and Bob's sister, Mabel Kettle, witnessed another kind of invasion, that of American servicemen. For in this crisis, as John Curtin had foreseen, Australia had looked to America, not to Britain, for military assistance in her defence. A new life had come to the major towns of Queensland,

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especially to Townsville and Charters Towers, where brash young GIs with new gold in their pockets came at night to live it up. There were fights and shindigs as in the old days: broken heads and hearts.

'Long enough!' said Mabel. 'They took over St Gabriel's and Blackheath School. You couldn't see the town for them - noisy, drinking and shouting. More showing off than anything... One came to our place. I didn't mind my daughter bringing him in. He was quite a nice chap. Don't know what became of him though. He wasn't killed in the war.'

Nor were some others who died. American servicemen were fatally involved in two dramatic crashes in Queensland in 1943.

Golden Heritage records: 'It was 4th February, and the afternoon train from Townsville to Charters Towers was crowded with 150 passengers, most of whom were soldiers returning from leave to the military camp at Sellheim. Lightning was flickering in the west, and rain appeared imminent... The train left Eneby Siding at 11.50 pm, and a few miles later the engine plunged into a small creek, where over 50 feet of ballast had been washed from under the line near the approaches to a bridge. Directly behind the engine an empty dining-car was smashed to matchwood, and two other carriages were derailed.'

The engine-driver and his fireman died, as did a soldier. Many others would have been killed, had not the dining-car been deserted and none of the crowded carriages in its place.

Later that year, Queensland's worst air disaster occurred, though few knew of it at the time, because of wartime censorship.

On 14 June, an American flying fortress, a B-17, crashed in the bush, at Baker's Creek near Mackay, within minutes of taking off. Of the 40 American servicemen on board, one survived.