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

That was on 22 August 1770. But nearly 70 years would pass before any naval personages actually landed on the Burdekin coast. Meanwhile, Matthew Flinders, in 1802, had meticulously explored and surveyed the adjacent waters and the Great Barrier Reef, as had Philip King, son of the Governor of New South Wales, in 1821. But neither, being single-minded surveyors of coastlines, reefs and islands, came ashore.

The first sea-captain to do so, while wintering in these waters, was John Wiokham, the former second-in-command of the Beagle (when Charles Darwin was the naturalist on board) and now its captain. In June 1839 he and his crew landed at Cape Upstart, and a few days later found the wide but shallow sandbank-islanded entrance of a large river, the Burdekin. The interior, however, was not explored until 1843, when the crew of a corvette called Fly, commanded by Captain Blackwood, spent several weeks in the area, observing the abundant animal, bird (and insect) life and making friends with local aborigines. At one point they sailed up the river and walked inland, exploring within a few kilometres of McDesme and Ayr.

Two years later the upper reaches of the Burdekin were sighted by Ludwig Leichhardt and his companions on their long and arduous expedition - it took over a year - from Brisbane to Port Essington, a military outpost on the Gulf of Carpentaria. It was Leichhardt, a German naturalist, who gave the Burdekin River its name, so naming it after one of the expedition's sponsors, a wealthy widow called Mrs Mary Ann Burdekin; her husband had been a London merchant and ironmonger. On a later expedition in 1848, while attempting to cross Australia from east to west, Leichhardt and his six companions disappeared somewhere west of Roma; their bodies were never found.

Another man who disappeared about this time was a young English sailor, James Morrill, whose ship was wrecked on the Barrier Reef in February 1846. He was ultimately the sole survivor of seven persons, including the captain and his wife, who drifted for 42 days on a makeshift raft from the Reef to Cleveland Bay, where they were eventually saved by a group of aborigines and taken into their tribe. Within two years the six others had died. Morrill lived with the

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Morrill returned to his own race in 1863, exposing his naked and sunburnt body to two shepherds and calling out: 'What cheer, shipmates!' When they pointed a gun at him he yelled: 'Don't shoot me! I'm a British object! A shipwrecked sailor!' Famous thenceforth for the last two years of his life, he became a storekeeper in Bowen, married a domestic servant who bore him a son, and died of a fever in 1865; he was 41. He was never comfortable wearing European clothes and went barefoot, disliking the constricting pressure of boots and shoes.

By the time James Morrill died, the land over which he had freely roamed with the aborigines had been investigated and occupied by sheepmen, cattlemen and speculators, not a few whom, as in other areas when land became available, were Scottish. They came north from Port Denison (Bowen), their sheep and cattle fanning out as runs or blocks were amalgamated into properties that extended for hundreds of square miles, some almost as large as Scotland itself. None reached to the coast, as a coastal strip three miles wide had been reserved by the government.

Captain Robert Towns, and his partner, Alexander Stuart, became overlords of most of the properties adjoining what are now Townsville and Ayr. By April 1873, when Robert Towns died, his pastoral empire included Inkerman Downs, Leichhardt Downs, Woodstock, Springfield and Jarvisfield, as well as half shares in Tondara, Kirknie and Kilbogie. Despite the depredations of cattle ticks, flood, fire and aboriginal hunters (a flood in 1870 destroyed about 12,000 sheep in Jarvisfield) 12,000 of Towns' Shorthorns and Herefords were sold one year in Melbourne for £9 a head. Most of Towns' Burdekin properties were purchased after his death by the North Australian Pastoral Company. Alexander Stuart became Premier of New South Wales and was knighted in 1885.

It was Robert Towns who established Townsville as a trading-post and a port for the Upper Burdekin in 1864, soon supplanting Bowen, which had been designated as a municipality in August 1863, and was named after the then Governor of Queensland. Nonetheless, Bowen remained the administrative centre of northern Queensland for several years, with a supreme court, hospital, post office, customs house, police-station and Crown Lands office.

By the time Towns died (in 1873), Townsville was a small but thriving community and port, with properly constructed roads reaching inland as far as Dalrymple, Ravenswood and Charters Towers, and south to Bowen itself.

A telegraph office had been opened in Townsville in 1869, soon after payable alluvial gold was found in some gullies near Ravenswood. Gold-bearing reefs were discovered the following year, and Ravenswood swiftly became an affluent little town, until upstaged by the even greater discoveries and consequent affluence of Charters Towers, where gold was found in 1872.

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Now few people live there and all that remains are some shanties and some faded historic hotels, that stick out by the roadside like rotten molars in a toothless jaw.

Ayr's fortunes were fortunately not based on gold, but sugar. Since 1868 land had periodically been resumed, or taken back, by the government from pastoral runs and made available to small farmers and individuals. Called selections, they were limited, if used for agricultural purposes, to 518 hectares (two square miles) and cost one pound per acre. The limit for grazing land was 12 square miles. These selections were mainly taken up by property-owners, and by those who were related to them or worked for them.

John Scott, who in 1872 selected over 1,000 hectares at Norham, not far from Ayr and McDesme, was the first to grow a small crop of sugar cane. It was cut for him by a sugar industry entrepreneur and road-builder, Archibald Macmillan, who in 1879 established the first major plantation and sugar mill in the area. Called Airdmillan, it began producing quantities of Burdekm sugar in July 1883. But prices were low, and expenditure and the costs of extravagant lifestyles and business operations were very high - over 200 Kanakas and 100 Europeans (including 60 Maltese) were employed at the mill. Within three years Macmillan and Airdmillan were out of business and broke. It is said that the name McDesme was made up from the initials of the first names of Macmillan's seven children, all girls.

Other plantations were set up, and sugar mills, seven in all, were built. But of these only the Kalamia and Pioneer mills survived into the twentieth century.

These entreprises and the influx of labour, as well as the domestic and business needs of the crop-farmers and cattlemen, determined that the area should be provided with some civic, social and commercial focus, and in 1882 the township of Ayr was established on the site of a camping reserve near Plantation Creek, chosen as such because it was on a slight rise and accordingly free from flooding. It was named after the Scottish town of Ayr, the birthplace of the Queensland premier, Sir Thomas Mcllwraith, who was one of the major partners in the North Australian Pastoral Company and had large business interests locally, in company shares and in his own purchases of land. Climatically, the two Ayrs could hardly have been less alike.

A Crown Land sale of lots in the new township was held in August 1882. Among the buyers were William Muir, William Collins, Robert Philp, Aplin Brown and Company, and a couple of banks. The 86 lots available grossed £4,441. The first stores were built and the first hotel - the Queens Hotel, run by Mrs Lynch. All were of timber, as were the rough and ready premises dotting the dusty roads: a blacksmith, saddler and tin smith; a cabinet-maker and

undertaker; a painter, butcher and carter. There was also a small courthouse and police-station, and a local surgeon, Dr Barrow, attended on the few people who lived there then.

Those pioneering families lived mainly in very basic two-room structures made of split palms, with roofs of galvanised iron to keep out the tropical torrents of rain. They fed simply on dishes of beef, mutton, poultry, pork, and eggs, with bread and potatoes to fill in the gaps, and a few other vegetables: onions, pumpkins and peas. Fruit and vegetables were surprisingly scarce. For exotic fruits were thought to cause diseases, and vegetable gardens were labour and water intensive and deemed to be the province of the lowly Chinese.

Kitchen necessities - and kitchens, like the toilet outhouse, or dunny, were detached from every home - included flour, sugar, oatmeal, sago, tapioca, dried apricots, currants, syrup and jam. Milk, butter and cheese came more often from a goat than from a cow. All these items had to be protected from ant attack and were usually stored in food safes, whose legs were creosoted and stood in tins of kerosene. Ants were a minor menace compared to the flies, and there were frequent and seasonal infestations of mosquitos, moths, beetles and frogs, not to mention the occasional intrusions of dingos, goannas, spiders and snakes.

There were also the everpresent dangers of illnesses, like dysentery, diphtheria, scarlet fever and other tropical fevers, typhoid and TB. As cures, castor oil, quinine and aspirin, laudanum and opium might be kept in medicine cupboards, with bottles of cough and cold mixtures, and laxatives to ease the bowels.

It was a hard life for all in early Ayr, a daily battle to maintain a basic existence. The working day was long and hard and leisure hours were few. Holidays were unheard of. But it was the steamy heat and the dust, the colossal storms, the silences, and the strange bird and animal cries of the bush that were most wildly different from places where people had lived down south. And how uncomfortable must their lives have been, roughly dressed as they were: the men in trousers, shirts, and vests, and wearing hats and boots; the women in full-length, long-sleeved dresses, buttoned up to their necks. And the only complete wash was in a shallow tin bath once a week.

Such was Ayr at the turn of the century and when Australia became a federated and united nation, on 1 January 1901. And little had changed, apart form additional wooden buildings and amenities, when Esther and her children came to Ayr in the Australian autumn of 1913.

Apart from the expansion of the sugar industry (3,500 hectares of sugar cane grew in the district, compared with 150 hectares of maize and about ten hectares of potatoes, pumpkins, melons and other fruit), the most significant mechanical advances were in motor vehicles, in railway and telephone communications, electric light and silent films.

Although the first telephone line, between Townsville and the Inkerman Station, had been opened in 1903, it was not until 1912 that Townsville was connected to Ayr by telephone, the wires running along the railway line. The

switchboard at the little exchange in Ayr was mainly operated by women, who connected all calls; there was no direct dialling or automation until 1969. Electricity came to Ayr in 1910, when Dave Edwards installed a generator to illumine his Delta Hotel and the adjacent Delta Theatre, as well as some nearby shops. A small power station was built on franchise by the entreprising Mr Edwards at the start of the First World War, and Queen Street, Ayr's main thoroughfare, was lit up at night. But the cost of electricity was so high that home consumers were few.

The Delta Theatre, later known as the Olympia, was a glittering palace of entertainment for many years. Adorned with tropical plants, as well as electric light, it had promenades, a wooden dance floor 80 feet long, and a stage 35 feet wide. It was the main venue for every kind of amateur and professional performance and screened the early silent films, which were accompanied by suitably dramatic piano music or sometimes by a small orchestra. Sometimes all sound was overwhelmed by torrents of rain on the iron roof. But the roof was ceiled and the building was converted into a picture theatre when talking pictures became the rage, the first talkie being seen and heard in Ayr in October 1929. Other social centres were the Federal Hall, Lynch's Hotel (called the Queen's) the Grand National Hotel opposite the railway station, and the Ayr Hotel, which opened in 1910.

The local Caledonian Society, formed in 1910 because many of the landowning farmers and businessmen were of Scottish descent, used to organise most of the major social events in Ayr, like concerts, dinners, dances, outings and balls, as well as a Sports Day at the Ayr Show ground on New Year's Day.

Sporting events were many. Horse-racing had taken place as soon as Ayr was named, the most popular meeting being the Boxing Day races at Ayr racecourse; and cricket had been played at the Ayr Recreation Reserve since 1889. The cricket team at McDesme won the premiership for three years in a row, 1910-1912. McDesme even had a ladies' team, who beat Ayr in 1912 -Miss Rossiter of McDesme excelled, taking six wickets for no runs. Football was also played by the McDesme managers and workers, and a football club was formed at the farm, at John Sopor's house, in 1906; the first secretary was Len Rutherford. Football had been played at Ayr since federation, and a Lawn Tennis Club was also in existence by the time Esther Honeycombe came to the Burdekin.

Not that she would have had the time or inclination for any such activities, or for the pleasures of the Delta Theatre - though she may have taken her children to see the silent films and the first circus to visit Ayr, which played for two nights in September 1913. Of more interest would have been the 20-year-old State School (headmaster, Robert Tait), where her two young sons were lodged for a while, and the Anglican and Methodist churches. The former had been wrecked, as was much of Ayr, by cyclone Leonta in 1903; the Methodists did not have their own church in Ayr until the year of Esther's arrival.

Her most immediate interest, however, would have centred on the other storekeepers in Ayr, of whom there were more than a few. Even before the

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There were several other stores, catering mainly for the needs of a largely agrarian community and the employees of the sugar cane farms and mills. The two main drapery, clothing and footwear stores were McKimmin & Richardson and Mellick's. There was also the Federal Store, owned by Charles Coutts and situated at the main intersection in Queen Street, opposite the Queen's Hotel and the Federal Hall.

Charles Coutts, another Scot, opened his Federal Store in 1894 - nearly 20 years before Esther Honeycombe set up shop.

John Kerr, writing in Black Snow and Liquid Gold, says of Coutts: 'With a wide range of stock, plus honesty, and Scottish business acumen, he prospered... (He) admired innovation, and in March 1910 imported a motor delivery truck. He delighted both children and adults with free rides. On Monday it was in revenue service with a run to Plantation Creek and back, delivering groceries to farmers. By this time he had a store and a bakery, plus a bulk store and land near the railway. Camaraderie and hard work were both encouraged, the firm having its own tennis and recreation club by 1913. Coutts built a new store at McDesme that year and was the pioneer retailer at Home Hill... The business was incorporated as Coutts Limited on 21 July 1916 with a nominal capital of £10,000 in one pound shares.'

Coutts' Federal Store (as with Esther's tiny shop) was the beginning of a major family business worth millions of dollars, that expanded into other stores and shopping centres, into service stations, cattle properties, land and aviation, and then collapsed and was broken up before its centenary was reached.

Its rise was followed, more slowly and cautiously, by the Honeycombe business that Esther began in a very small way in Ayr.

And in the very same month and year that the Honeycombe business was founded, far to the south the foundation stone was laid of a new capital city -Canberra.

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According to Alma, her mother Esther Honeycombe came to Ayr with 25 shillings in her purse. According to Esther's grandson, Lloyd, the 25 shillings were left to her by her husband when he died. But Esther was not as poverty-stricken as legend might like. For she earned a little income from the selling of home-made and home-grown produce; she also had a couple of horses, and her own home.

After her husband's death, in March 1911, she had refused to accept any charity, dismissing a proposal from gold-miners who had known Bill, that they would raise some money for her by making a collection. One of her sisters (or half-sisters, daughters of Annie Chapman) had toiled as a cleaner in banks and schools, to support her children after their father died. This Esther did not need to do as she was able to eke out a living by selling eggs and bread and other produce, coming into Charters Towers once a week from Mt Leyshon, where she and the children lived. She probably travelled by horse and cart, and sometimes she took Bob Honeycombe senior's six-year-old daughter, Mabel, with her on her return. She probably also sold other home-made items like cakes and pies.

By such means she was able to stabilise her existence and in so doing proved to herself that she had some business capabilities, sufficient to venture away from Charters Towers and realise her husband's dying dream of setting up a shop near the new railway station in Ayr - which was already linked to Townsville and would be connected by rail to Bowen in September 1913.

But before she moved both house and home, literally, to Ayr, she inspected the area for herself, staying, at Arthur Rutherford's suggestion or invitation, at McDesme.

One of Arthur's five children, Ruth, who married grazier, Les Cox, in 1929 when she was 20, told Esther's grandson, John, years later that after Bill died, Esther came down and stayed with the Rutherfords while she assessed the Burdekin's prospects, before making a final decision to settle in Ayr; Hugh Douglas, who couldn't read or write and was working on the farm at the time, is said to have loaned her some money to start a business.

Hughie, who had been one of Bill's mates and had cut cane with him in 1909, admired Esther, and is said to have wanted to marry her. How differently would have the future have been if she had said 'Yes'.

But her mind was set on realising what Bill had probably discussed with her. She looked around Ayr and no doubt examined what shops and stores were already there. She looked for a site near the railway station, where passengers would need food and drink to sustain them on their journeys; she looked for a place that wouldn't be flooded and which she could afford. She found such a place - possibly with the benevolent help of Arthur Rutherford or

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other affluent friends - opposite overcrowded Ayr State School, which would

barren plot of land in Munro Street, at the Railway Street end, a few hundred

yards from the railway station and halfway between the station and Queen

Street. i- '•'

Lot 121, in Allotment 9, Section 50, was sold to Mrs IME Honeycombe in Ayr on 18 February 1913. It consisted of one rood, eight perches of land (about a quarter of an acre) and its owner Arthur Cox, a wealthy grazier, sold it to her for £60 - although the sum was not fully paid off for eight months, until November.

With the help of one of her half-brothers, who was a carpenter, and probably aided by some of Bill's mates (like Hughie Douglas), Esther transported her wood and corrugated iron home on a bullock train from Mt Leyshon to Ayr, where it was reconstructed. A small wooden hut was built beside it by her carpenter brother; she paid him off at £1 a week. And suddenly, there it was -the first Honeycombe store in Queensland.

While that was happening, Esther and her four children may have lived briefly in a tent, as family legend claims. This has been denied, however, by Alma, who also refuted another legend, that Esther made meals, or pies, for railway workers. But John, Esther's grandson, said: 'I believe she obtained work cooking for the railway gang, who were laying the line from Ayr to Bowen. Townsville and Ayr were already connected. That's the line near where we live now. She made bread and pies and sold them. That's how she got the idea of selling groceries also. She told me she started the store with a £20 order for supplies from Burns Philp, who were merchants, and she had to sell the articles before she could pay for them, because she didn't have £20.'

The idea of running a grocer's store must have been with Esther before she came to Ayr, as the railway gang were temporary customers, their work being completed six months after she opened the shop for business - when the low-level Inkerman Bridge was completed in September, thus enabling the first train from Bowen down south to steam into Ayr.

A photograph of the shop and the Honeycombe home, probably taken towards the end of that year, shows Bill, aged 9; Alma, 11, and Len, 6, on the verandah steps; and Rene, 13 and Esther (who is barely taller than Rene and was then 34), standing to one side in a pocket garden. Also in the picture is a thin young man wearing a slouch hat and holding a bike. This was Bill Aitken, a weedy youth, son of Esther's half-sister, Sis. He was Esther's first full-time employee and lived with the family, probably bedding down at the back of the shop. In later years he married and managed a small store that the Honeycombes opened on Macmillan Street.

Another early employee was Dave Tosh, who was taken on at the age of 14 to assist at the Munro Street store.

Freda King, nee Shann, in 1991 recalled some memories of those days. She wrote: 'I remember when the first shop was opened - the little corrugated shop where sweets, etc, were available. I was a small child about 7 years old I

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He would have done this round on horseback. For horses, a capital investment then, were used by Esther for several years for making deliveries and collecting supplies, with panniers or baskets slung on either side of the horses' backs. Charles Courts' Federal Store in Queen Street was way ahead. He already had a solid-tyre, belt-driven motor delivery van.