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

Esther's horses would have been stabled in a shed at the back of the shop, where there would also have been a dusty chicken run, a fenced vegetable plot and a dunny (an outside toilet). Another major feature of the backyard would have been a whirring windmill over a well or water bore. Almost every house had its own windmill, and Ayr was known as the Town of Windmills in those days. Beyond, the clank and whistle of steam trains, their coming and going, were an ever-present sound.

Across the road, in Ayr State School, which the three youngest Honeycombes attended, Bessie Carcary, aged 16, was teaching five-year-olds for 12/6 a week. She bought sandwiches from Esther Honeycombe and got to know her children. Bessie studied at night and at weekends and in due course qualified as an assistant teacher. When she was 20 she transferred to the school at Brandon. Two years later she married Frank Smith, whom she met at the Delta Theatre; he 'played in a band in front of the Theatre for an hour before the pictures began.' He would complain in later years: 'There are three kinds of people in this world, men, women and school teachers, and I went and married one.'

Although three of Esther's children were still at school in 1913, all four of them were employed by her in the new business before and after school, and at weekends. It was a family business from the start. Rene, who was 14 in December, worked fulltime.

Rene was never happy working for her mother. It was not to her liking, and according to Alma, Rene and her mother 'didn't get on very well'. Rene argued a lot, and was 'stuck up' according to Alma - 'she didn't want to work in a shop'. It was too smalltime and smalltown for Rene; she wanted to better herself. And as soon as she could, probably when Alma was old enough to take her place, Rene took a course as a stenographer.

Her nephew John, Esther's grandson, said of Rene: 'She was a very independent and clever girl. She studied in her own time, at night, and learned how to do book-keeping and to type. When she was quite young, she got a job as a secretary with one of the first solicitors who opened up in Ayr, Mr Dean. She kept in touch with him and wrote to him for the rest of his life; he was still practising in Townsville when he was over 80. The firm, Dean, Gillman and Thompson, is still one of the leading law firms there'.

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When the war ended in November 1918, there was an inappropriate echo of the sights and sounds of war in Ayr's victory celebrations, which were prefaced by a torchlight procession to the sports ground and concluded with a blazing bonfire and fireworks exploding and screaming in the night sky. Esther would have been there with her children, only two of whom were now working in the shop; Rene was with the solicitor, Mr Dean, and Bill was an apprentice to a carpenter.

Parochial bickering about a suitable war memorial and honour boards in the district was not resolved for five years, when a Memorial Park was established on the recreation reserve.

In the meantime, a postwar blight infected the land: living standards declined, resulting in a rash of local and national strikes. In addition, an influenza epidemic disrupted many people's lives throughout 1919: ships were quarantined, and cinemas, theatres, racecourses and schools were temporarily closed; in some areas people had to wear gauze masks on public transport and in public places; church services were curtailed and individual worshippers had to sit three feet apart. In that year, over 11,000 Australians, out of a white population of about five million, died from the flu.

Yet the postwar years also produced several positive events and improvements in amenities and services that would enhance the lives of many, including the Honeycombes'. And business was sufficiently good for Esther to have the shop rebuilt in 1920 for £286, complete with office, flagpole and a proper sign.

Airmail letters bearing Australian stamps could now be bought; radio messages in morse code could be sent direct from Britain to Australia; the Ross Smith brothers flew from England to Australia in just under 28 days; Qantas was formed in 1920; and Holden and Ford began making motor cars. Edith Cowan became the first woman member of any Parliament; Queensland became the first state to abolish the death penalty and the Country Women's Association was formed, as well as the Federal Country Party and the Communist Party; and the Prince of Wales dedicated the foundation stone of Canberra's parliament house.

In Ayr, Esther and her family could have read Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, written by May Gibbs; they could have seen the silent film classic, The Sentimental Bloke, as well as the first film of On our Selection. Ginger Meggs first appeared in a cartoon in the Sydney Sunday Sun, and Jack O'Hagan wrote Along the Road to Gundagai. In 1923, DH Lawrence began writing Kangaroo in Thirroul; the first radio station, 2SB, began broadcasting in Sydney via the sealed set system; and a product called Vegemite began to be made.

Far to the west of Ayr, a gold prospector found a seam of rich silver-lead ore, and called his lease Mount Isa.

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In 1924 the last Cobb & Co horse-drawn coach was taken off the road, and Woolworths opened a bargain basement in Sydney - 'No Mail or Telephone Orders, No Deliveries, Cash-and -Carry only' - wherein a jar of vaseline, a scrubbing brush, a cup and saucer could all be bought for sixpence; tin kettles were a shilling each; six glass tumblers were 1/6; a woollen vest cost 2/9, and a pair of silk bloomers 6/9.

Two months earlier, on 22 May 1922, Rene Honeycombe, aged 22, had married Horace Walter Horn in Ayr.

He was an ex-London policeman and was about 12 years older than Rene; he was also much taller. She and Alma were both less than five feet tall. A Police Sergeant, Horace had come to Australia before the war and had been posted to Townsville, where he and Rene had met, She had moved thither when Mr Dean opened an office there. She travelled around the state with him, to wherever he was posted; they were the first of the family to own a car. They also had two children, a boy and a girl, and eventually settled in Brisbane. Rene, having made her escape, never returned to live in Ayr.

Bill, who was 18 in 1922, was also reluctant to be involved in the family store, letting Len, Bill Aitken and Dave Tosh deliver produce around the town, fetch fresh supplies from the station, and assist Esther and Alma with heavy weights and tasks. It seems that after doing an abortive apprenticeship as a carpenter, he worked as a locomotive driver for a sugar mill. Jobs were hard to come by after the war, and he had perforce to live at home. Then, on 1 May 1924, when he was 20, Bill was officially apprenticed in Ayr as a dental mechanic to 'surgeon dentist' Alfred Turner for a period of five years.

The articles of indenture could be cancelled by mutual consent on one month's notice. But Bill stuck it out, diverting himself by playing football and tennis, by going to the pictures, by taking part in musical evenings at the home of Bessie and Frank Smith, and by singing in a choir.

The next of Esther's children to marry was Alma, who now worked in the office of Honeycombes (renamed the Progressive Store) as a clerk. She had become a dominant force in the grocery business, and as well as being ever cheerful, she was very astute. The wedding took place in the Church of All Saints in Ayr on 3 September 1929; Alma was 27. Her husband, who was two years older and is described in the marriage certificate as a 'shop assistant', was Lloyd Wilson.

Lloyd was born in Clifton, south of Toowoomba; his father was a grazier (cattle) in southwest Queensland, near Dalby, and in the mid-twenties Lloyd used to come north to visit a sister, who had married a cane-farmer in Ayr. He

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Lloyd Wilson seems not to have had a strong constitution, and though lively, not to have been very strong-willed. For the bridal couple not only moved into Esther's house to stay but both also continued to work in the store, Alma in the office. The store had expanded by then, in size and business, and Esther now employed a trained young grocer, Charlie Maopherson, who was paid more than anyone else. He was unmarried and came from Charters Towers, where his mother ran a hotel. Esther now had four young men working for her -Charlie, Jim Aitken, Dave Tosh and Lloyd - in addition to Alma and Len, who was nearly 23 when Alma wed.

It had apparently not been the young couple's plan to lodge with Esther -which they did for over a year. For Alma had told Lloyd, when they were courting: 'I'm not going to marry you until I get a home of my own'. And Esther had said: 'Oh, that land next door's for sale - pity you couldn't buy it, and then you could live next to me'. Esther's wish was Alma's command, and somehow Lloyd found the money not only to buy the land at 131 Munro Street, but eventually to buy a house from the Rickards in Ravenswood and have it transported to Ayr. This took some time and also cost £400, which was paid off in instalments over a period of several years. The house in which Alma would live for 53 years, until she died, was not in fact erected and habitable until 1930 -the year in which Bill married and Len took his mother overseas.

Bill had completed his apprenticeship as a dental mechanic in May 1929, and it appears that he then worked in Charters Towers, with AW Trembath, dentist, before heading south to Rockhampton. However, this stint in Charters Towers may have occurred some years later.

Bill's whereabouts in the 1930s are generally rather uncertain, as is information about his first and second marriages. Even his friendship with Frank Clausen in Ayr has been misreported For the story was that Frank had influenced Bill into choosing dentistry as a career. In fact, Frank Clausen did not arrive in Ayr to practice as a dentist until 1930, by which time Bill was a qualified dental mechanic, and married. He and Frank are said to have been close friends, and to have gone off into the bush shooting ducks, wild pigs and crocodiles: Bill was a first class shot. He was also six years older than Frank.

We do not know why Bill went to Rockhampton in 1929, but we know that he married there.

He was lodging with a Mrs Kate Whitmee, a widow with five children, four of whom were boys. Mrs Whitmee was Danish in origin (her maiden surname was Holm) and her husband, Arthur Biron Whitmee, had been Anglo-French. Born in Islington in London, he had been a labourer working at or near Mt Morgan. The Whitmees had married in Rockhampton in 1902, when he was 32.

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Bill and Zoe also married in Rockhampton - on 20 January 1930. She was 24 and he was 25. It is possible that he actually met Zoe somewhere other than Rockhampton and during his apprenticeship. Apparently Esther was keen on the match and told Bill to marry Zoe.

It was not a happy marriage. It seems they were temperamentally opposed, Bill being easy-going, with a strong sense of humour, Zoe being somewhat puritanical, obsessive, stubborn and staid. Alma observed: 'He didn't like her". And when Alma asked Bill: 'Why did you marry Zoe?,' he replied: 'What's anybody marry anyone for?'

Meanwhile, Len and Esther had journeyed to England, the first Honeycombes to return to their native land since William the stonemason and his family had sailed to Australia from Liverpool 80 years ago.

Len, who would be 24 in October 1930, had wanted to visit England for several years. He had never met his English grandfather, John Honeycombe, who died in Kalgoorlie, and was a child when his own father died. So any ancestral tales he may have heard would have come from the womenfolk. But he must have known that his grandfather, John, who had died in October 1923, had been born in Bristol and brought to Australia as a child. It seems, however, that the Honeycombes' ancient origins in Cornwall were unknown to him, and would remain unknown for another 34 years.

The inipetus for the voyage to Europe came from Mr and Mrs Ashworth; they had a teenage son, Lennie whose further education would be enhanced, they felt, by a trip abroad. Mr Len Ashworth, a hardware merchant, had taken an interest in Len Honeycombe, helping him with advice on business matters, and he had said: 'Len, if you save your money, when we go to England with Lennie, you can come with us.' And Esther, who had never been out of Queensland and was now over 50, was persuaded to travel with her youngest son. She made use of her absence from Ayr to have her old home expanded and rebuilt.

They left Ayr on the night of Monday, 3 March and drove, via Mackay and Rockhampton, to Brisbane, just after noon on the Wednesday. Len and Esther do not seem to have travelled south with the Ashworths, who may have gone to Brisbane earlier, or by train. On 12 March the party boarded the Hobson Bay, a modest cargo and passenger ship, and sailed for Melbourne, via Sydney and Hobart. Most of them were sea-sick.

In Melbourne, on 25 March, a historic family meeting took place - and one wishes Esther had written more about it and about what was said. She noted: 'Went to Regelsens, stayed lunch and tea. Met son Dick and daughter Gussie. Also saw Jane Honeycombe, aged 81 yrs. Mrs R 79, both wonderful for age.'

Jane and Mrs Regelsen (Mary Ann) were the eldest daughters of Richard Honeycombe, stonemason, who had emigrated to Geelong with his wife Elizabeth and three eldest children (including Jane and Mary Ann) in 1853.

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What questions did Len have for his elderly cousins? What did he ask about his grandfather, John, about his greatgrandfather, William the carpenter, and about his ancestors and England? And what were Jane and Mary Ann able to tell him? They in turn would have asked about the Queensland Honeycombes and would have doubtless been pleased to hear that the family business in Ayr was prospering. They must have felt a pang of envy about Len and Esther's voyage to England, the land of their birth, which they would never see.

Bob Honeycombe of Charters Towers was also in Melbourne in 1930 (he was 23) and visited Mary Ann Regelsen. He went on to meet Thomas Gordon Honeycombe, then 41, second son of Mary Ann's younger brother Tom. Said Bob years later: 'Thomas Gordon Honeycombe was a manager of the Dunlop Rubber Tyre company in 1930. I met him in his office and he invited me to his home. My aunt, Mary Ann Regelsen, said he was too rich for us. I didn't go'.

On 26 March, the Honeycombes and Ashworths left Melbourne on the Hobson Bay, sailing via Adelaide, Fremantle, Colombo, Suez and Malta to Southampton, where they docked at 4.0am on 3 April 1930. From there they travelled by train to London, staying at a hotel in the Strand.

Esther kept a diary of the whole trip, jotting down her impressions and noting where she and Len went and what they saw. This diary is reproduced in full in Part Four of this book.

She and Len drove with the three Ashworths around Britain from coast to coast, lodging at inexpensive guesthouses and hotels, sometimes on farms, and visiting relations, or friends of relations and friends of friends - like relatives of Horace Horn in New Cross, London. Len, and presumably Mr Ashworth, also had various business contacts to follow up and factories to see. We know that Len had a letter of recommendation from the Burdekin merchants, Burns Philp, introducing him to a London merchant in Fenchurch Street. Esther was entranced by the scenery: green pastures, quaint old villages, ancient cathedrals and castles. She was thrilled to see, and feel, snow, which she had never seen before.

With occasional breaks for recuperation the five Australians drove (presumably in a hired car) from London to Inverness and Aberdeen, via the Lake District, Loch Lomond and Loch Ness. And of course they visited the Scottish Ayr. They saw Blackburn and Blackpool, Ben Nevis and Snowdon, Conway and Carnarvon Castles, Dover Castle and Stonehenge. They went to Anglesey and only briefly into Cornwall as far as Camelford, from where, returning to Devon via Launceston, they passed ten miles north of Calstock and Honeycombe House.

In London they toured Westminster Cathedral, St Paul's Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London, and saw the changing of the guard. They also went to the pictures - Esther, it seems, liked the magic of the cinema -and she enjoyed comparing the prices of goods with those back home. 'Wonderful', she writes several times, as well as 'Very wonderful'. People were

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often 'very nice', though some were shockingly poor and dirty. Sometimes she felt quite tired.

On 23 July, Esther sailed from Southampton on the liner Olympic. Len saw her off, and it seems she travelled on her own, probably third class. She wrote less about the voyage home, but she went to the ship's pictures, to concerts, attended church services, and apparently never went ashore.

On 21 August 1930, the ship docked at Fremantle, arriving at Melbourne on the 28th. Soon Esther was home - moving into her newly built house - and with what tales to tell! She had been away from Ayr for all of six months, the most amazing of her life.

Len, meanwhile, had gone around the world - the first Honeycombe to do so. He had sailed across the Atlantic to Canada, to meet a penfriend, a girl to whom another female penfriend had prevailed on him to write. He returned to Ayr via Los Angeles and the Pacific. He had a letter of introduction from the Texas Oil Company to see an oil refinery and an oil-field near LA. What else he did, what pleasures he sought, what cities he saw, we do not know; but his horizons had inevitably widened in more ways than one.

He returned quite happily and hopefully to Ayr in September 1930, to yet another girl, who lived in Ravenswood, and to whom he had written regularly while he was away.

Len was something of a 'ladies man', according to his nephew, Lloyd - 'He had flair and personality; he could make a woman feel like a million dollars.' Apart from an abundance of energy, good humour and charm, Len was taller than average in those days (he was 5'8"), with thick dark hair, a noble brow, a generous mouth, and pale blue eyes.

The Ravenswood recipient of his letters while he was overseas was Ethel Keller. The daughter of an accountant, who had once been an undertaker as well a Shire Clerk and Mines Secretary, she had six brothers and five sisters. The Kellers had originated in Dublin, but both of Ethel's grandmothers were German. She was 17 when she first met Len; he was 22. It was a year or so before Alma's wedding, in 1929.

Rene and her police sergeant husband, Horace, happened to be stationed at the time in Ravenswood, where the diminishing population (all the mines had closed down by the end of the war) would eventually determine their removal as well. Rene used to attend the Kellers' church and Horace played tennis with them. As Len's exertions in the Honeycombe business had overtired him, it was decided, no doubt by his mother and sister, that he should have a change of scene, a holiday - so why not go and stay in Ravenswood with his oldest sister, Rene? This Len did, and met some of the Horns' young friends,

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including the Kellers, who made as much as they could of the social life that was left.

On his return to Ayr, Len talked enthusiastically about the young girl he'd met who was such a wonderful tennis player. Weekend visits to Ravenswood became usual after that, and Esther went too. Ethel would sometimes visit Ayr with her family at the time of the Ayr Show. But by 1930 the decline of Ravenswood as a gold-mining town became terminal, and the railway line closed. Although the Kellers moved to Home Hill, a dozen kilometers south of Ayr, in 1933, it was not until the Second World War that anything came of Ethel's association with Len and they were wed.

Bill, meanwhile, had returned to Ayr, to work for the family business. He and Zoe lived in a house in Munro Street, like the other Honeycombes. It was not a good time for businesses. For the collapse of national economies worldwide in the 'Great Depression', launched by the Wall Street crash in October 1929, was spreading. By 1931, 25% of the Australian workforce was unemployed. In such difficult times the Honeycombes clung together for financial security and mutual support.

Nonetheless, Len's visit to Europe and America had opened his eyes to modern business methods and machinery, and had fired his ambition to be more than the manager of a small country store. For Esther had tended to leave the running of the store to him as she aged, although she and Alma were always included in any discussions about improvements, customers, new stock and new ideas. The latter mainly came from Len, and after his lengthy trip overseas, he was even more keen to exploit the store's potential, as well as any commercial developments in Ayr connected with farming and the land. He had dreamed of being a farmer when he was a child. So he had told his mother, when she asked him what he would like to be when he grew up. He also had a great liking for horses, and looked after the few the family kept - as well as the vegetable plot. He could remember the pleasure of riding on a horse in front of his father when he was about four.

The first expansionist move in the family business was made in 1935, when Bill and Len sought, and were granted, a John Deere franchise (they made and sold tractors). A machinery division of Honeycombes was thus created which was run from the store, the tractors being housed in disused horse sheds at the back - Honeycombes had a delivery van by now. Bill, now 31, was put in charge of this development. Although he had no mechanical training (apart from being a dental mechanic), he had a certain aptitude for machines. He assembled the first John Deere tractor seen in Ayr, which was delivered by a train in boxes. But spare parts were hard to get, and two years later the