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

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Cyril had elaborated on this in a letter he had written to Bob Honeycombe in 1978, when he said: 'After my last letter to you I met a chap (Jimmy Abbott) that had just returned from Durban, and he told me that he looked Johnny Honeycombe up. At the Coogee Hotel he was told that Johnny could be found at the Smuggler's Inn, a real cheap joint down by the docks where all the prostitutes hang out. There he was told the police had arrested him. It could not have been his first conviction as he drew four years hard labour for fraud. It came out that he had signed and cashed cheques that didn't belong to him. First offenders only serve a third of their time.'

Other family matters of a historical sort were detailed in the six typed letters Cyril sent to Bob in 1978. What follows now is Cyril's story, as told to Bob, and also as recorded by me in 1982.

Cyril: 'My father was christened Frederick George. He was born in Melbourne, educated there and served his apprenticeship as a coppersmith there. He was an excellent tradesman, and also mastered plumbing, sheetmetal-working and panel-beating, and for that reason he was never scared to resign one position and seek employment in another province. In other words, he was a rolling stone all his life and never gathered any moss. I will not say he was an alcoholic, but he did have a drinking problem, which he tried to fight. But it killed him in the end.

'He married my mother in St Mary's Cathedral, C of E, in November 1915, when he was 27, and she was pregnant. She, I think, was 18 or so. I was their only child and was born in May 1916 in Johannesburg.

'My father's two sisters, Olive and Rose, married well, and they looked down on their brother as the black sheep of the family. I hardly knew them. I saw little of Rosie Currie. I saw a little bit of Olive - because my father used to lodge with the Curries and I went there on a couple of weekends. Both families, Lawless and Currie, owned their own homes, which were in Mayfair. Today it's a slum area, a mixture of blacks, coloureds, Indians, and poor whites - a real bad place to live in.

'Olive was very fussy, very particular. I would share a room with Ernie (four years older). He was very shy, more like a girl. His mother used to pamper him. She used to wash him; she used to dress him; she treated him like a girl. When she threw my father out of the house because of his boozing I never saw Ernie again. Not until my father died (in 1948).

'Jim Lawless used to play the trombone with the South African Railways Band.

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'Bob Currie was a drunkard. He had a job where he could booze, for he had no boss to worry him. He had this big railway coach - one portion was his bedroom, one portion was his workshop, one portion was the kitchen - he had a cook - and one portion was where his black workmen slept. And they'd take him along to a station and unhook his truck, and he'd be there a day or two and repair all the weighing scales. Then they'd hook him on again and take him to other stations. He arrived in Messina once when I was there with my Dad. He bunked up for about 10 days and in that period he and my Dad had a real good booze-up. I never saw him again. Olive and Rosie, but not their husbands, attended my father's funeral - we rode together in the hearse. That was in 1948. I've never seen them since.

'Uncle John was a sticker. By trade he was a carpenter and worked all his life at the Crown goldmine; he became a foreman. He could take a drink and he could give a drink. But he wasn't a man that really drank: he was a man for his home. His wife, Minnie, was a big strapping woman. He was rather small. I only knew about his death by reading about it in our local newspaper. I did not attend the funeral but I did phone his daughter, Jean. She invited me to pay them a visit, but as they lived so far away I never went.

'I do not know the year when my father, his brother and sisters emigrated from Australia. But I do know that their father returned shortly after the 1914-18 war, leaving the children behind.

'All I know about my grandfather (Jack) is that when he went back to Australia he left each of his grandchildren £50 with some lawyer, for when we reached 21. This lawyer pissed all the money - he spent it. So when I got to 21 I got bugger-all.

'My father never corresponded with his father. I never read one letter his father wrote to my father. Never. Not one.

'I am almost sure that my old man told me his grandmother's maiden name was Elizabeth Ryder. He told me many times that his grandfather was a very good stonemason and was a very big union man. And for being such a big unionist he was thrown out of the country, out of England. Plus he was very much against the royal family.

'My Dad was also very anti royalty. There was only one person my father liked - actually he idolised him - and that was Charlie Chaplin. Whenever drunk, he tried to mimic him.

'In all the years I knew him, not once can I ever recall seeing him in a suit. If he didn't wear a polo-necked jersey, he wore a tie with the tail stuck in the inside of his shirt. Even on Sundays. He always wore a tie. Never saw him with

his shirt open and his chest exposed. He didn't have many teeth in his mouth -those he had he brushed every morning. His shoes he polished every night. Otherwise he wasn't very fussy about himself - although he shaved himself regular. He'd made his own razor, a cut throat. My father had very thick, wiry, curly hair - so had my daughter - and he had to use a steel comb. He was about 57", had gray hair and a face like yours (GH). His health was very, very good -until about three years before he died.

'On his right arm he had a coloured tattoo of a big kangaroo. Everybody knew him as "Aussie". He had an Australian accent and was known as "Aussie". He was a very good cricket-player and smoked Venus cigarettes.

'My mother was very attractive, with long dark hair. She used to take orders for cakes, working at home and icing and decorating cakes. And she did a lot of sewing and dress-making.

'Grandfather Roebl (or Robel) on my mother's side came from Germany, and he could speak, write and read seven languages. I was the only one of his descendants who married a German; Babette could speak his language and he was thrilled. He himself married an Afkikaans-speaking woman, a Miss Niemand; they had 10 children. John, their eldest, went to Australia at the age of 25 and worked as a journalist with some newspaper in Melbourne. He married, had one child, a daughter. He intended to return to South Africa, but died before he could.

'As I said, my old man was a rolling stone. He was working as a coppersmith on the railways during the First World War - he married in 1915 -and he got gassed. That's why he took to liquor, he said. The old steam engines used to have big copper cylinders, and there was an accumulation of fumes in one of these cylinders, and my father reckoned he got gassed and then became an alcoholic in his way. He wouldn't go out of the house without a half bottle of brandy in his coat pocket. He wasn't always drinking. He was a man who could last for months and months without a drink. Then he would go on a spree.

'He played music only when he was drunk. He put a mouth-organ in his mouth, pushed it to the side; and he played this bloody mandolin. And he would tap-dance, and he put this cap on the side of his head, over his ear, and he'd sing all these music-hall songs. Oh, he was very comical. But he had to be drunk.

'He couldn't stay put. He went all over the bloody country. He wanted to be on the move. Mother would stay with my grandmother, my mother's mother, Mrs Roebl, in Johannesburg. So would I. And off he would go, to Durban, Cape Town. The only home my mother ever had was when my father went to Rhodesia and worked his way down to Messina, on the border. They had a little minehouse there.

'When I was 16 (in 1932), I was living with my grandmother and had started to work as a learner cabinet-maker. Before that I went to so many schools I didn't know whether I was coming or going. On account of my old man I haven't got a good education. I was taken out and replaced in so many

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different schools it was impossible for me to learn. I did pass Standard 6. Although my granny was very good to me, I had to be independent because I had nobody to look after me. The only friend I really had was my Auntie Ruby. She was three years my senior and we were very close. Apart from that, nobody.

'I couldn't get on with my father in Messina. He was a very quiet and reserved man when he was sober. When he got drunk, he made a fool of himself. And I didn't like that. All my friends thought he was a bloody stupid drunkard. I was embarrassed. But I couldn't do anything other than live with him, because the money I earned couldn't support me. There was no affection. No. When I heard he was dead I said: "Thank Christ!'

'Back in Johannesburg I did some work as a fully fledged carpenter. But at that time the unions were very strong. As I had no papers, I couldn't become a member and get a membership card. So I was hounded out.

'I then went down the mines. 1 started all over again and became a learner gold-miner. First of all I was a riveter, working on the surface. That was in 1939. I worked at that for about two years. But I didn't earn more than £4.4.0 a week, and I thought, that if I went undergound, I'd get more. First I was on the Geduld goldmine, and then moved to East Geduld. And there I worked for over 30 years until it closed down in 1972. I had 34 years unbroken service altogether on those mines.

'I started at £3 a week. I did pipe work; I did track work; I did timber work; I did developing; I did contracting. All on East Geduld. I did a variety of jobs, mostly blasting away rock, working for a contractor - drilling holes in a stoup, a certain area of gold-bearing rock and charging up your blast. Geduld and East Geduld were next to each other, situated in Springs, and for all those 34 years I lived in Jeppestown, 30 miles away. Every morning I caught the 5.12 train at Jeppe Station and reached Springs Station at 6.15 if the train was on time. There I pushed a bicycle 1V4 miles to the mine and was underground at seven o'clock. I got home at five o'clock. On Saturdays I used my car, getting home at three o'clock.

'My wife and I met through a friend called Jimmy Mitchell. He was working behind the counter of a store selling plumbing equipment in

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Johannesburg, and my father happened to go in and Jimmy said: "Hallo, Mr Honeycombe". My father didn't know him. But as Jimmy didn't like that job, my father got him a job in a sweet factory. Jimmy in turn got Willie Zinserling a job in the factory, and so I met Willie's sister, Babette. She worked there as well. But then I left and went to Messina. Only when I came back did I meet her again.

Elizabeth Zinserling was born on 1 December 1912 in Pretoria. She was therefore three and a half years older than Cyril Honeycombe. When they married, by special licence, on 7 August 1938, she was nearly 26 and newly pregnant. Cyril was 22. Their first child, William Norman (Bill), was born on 7 March 1939. Their only other child, a daughter, Sandra Eliza, was born in 1943. The family lived in rented accommodation in Jeppestown, in various flats.

Cyril: 'During the Second World War I was classified as a 'keyman'. I, plus dozens of others, did join up, but I was rejected. It wasn't compulsory. But I went to Messina to join the Army and was exempted. Essential service. I wanted to join up, but the goldmine wouldn't let me go. At the time, General Smuts said: "A man underground is worth more to the country than five men at the front." On our mine an ammunition factory sprang up overnight. It was built of corrugated sheets of iron and employed hundreds of girls. Babette's father, who was German, was interned during the war.

'My mother died soon after the end of the war (in 1947). She was only 45. She had a hell of a death - she suffered from cancer of the womb. I said "Thank God" when she died.

'My father died the following year. He was living with us at the time. We didn't have an extra bedroom and he slept on the carpet in the living-room, or on the sofa. One night I heard this commotion. Jesus Christ! I thought he had the fits, so we called the doctor in. And he told me my father was suffering from something caused when the booze wears off (delirium tremens). My father left us, but then he came back, and he was on the booze, and he was sitting on the couch and he said to me: "Cyril - give me a gin." And I wouldn't give it to him, and he took this fit again. He went off his bloody head. This was a few years before he died. This happened when he was working as a plumber at the Welcome goldmine; he went there when my mother died. They phoned me,

said he was really bad. So I went on my own to this house, which was a kind of hospital. He was in a coma in a bed. They told me that over the past four months my father wouldn't allow anybody into his room. Because he used to wet himself. And he was shy, lest people saw his bed was always wet. They said he was very, very bad - he was dying. He had cirrhosis of the liver - there was nothing they could do. So I came home to get my wife.

'When we got back to the hospital, he was dead. He was 59. 'Thank Christ!" I said.'

Cyril's only son, Bill, a panel-beater, married Dolly James in 1963. They had three children: Warren (born in 1965); Michelle, and Glenda.

Bob Honeycombe first wrote to Cyril from Charters Towers before Christmas 1977; Cyril's first long typed letter to Bob is dated 6.1.78. His longest letter, written in September 1978, refers proudly to his wife, Babette.

He says: 'My wife has never stopped working - only long enough to give birth to our children... She is still working for the same firm. On her coming birthday, which is on 1 December, she turns 66. That means she'll have 51 years of unbroken service. When she turned 55 they started to pay her her pension money. She was told she could carry on working if she wanted. If you saw her, you would never think she is nearly 66, as on her face there isn't the sign of a wrinkle... It shows that hard work killed nobody.'

She was still working at the sweet factory in September 1982. Cyril, who had been transferred to Marienburg, didn't like it there and retired in 1972, by which time he was earning 1,000 rand a month, a comfortable wage.

In November 1970 Cyril was interviewed by Mining News when the final blast at East Geduld was set off at 2.20 pm on the 26th - after which the mine's 41 year operational existence came to an end.

The News reporter, under the headline Veterans say farewell to East Geduld, wrote: 'Once this was the richest mine on the East Rand. During its lifetime it produced 517.5 metric tons of gold and 45.5 metric tons of silver. Stoper CN Honeycombe was one of the old hands who attended the closing function. In 31 years he drove 802,000 km, equal to 20 times the cirumference of the earth - to and from work. Mr Honeycombe, who lives in Johannesburg, covered 83 km to and from East Geduld every day. He said: "I love the Golden City... I never found it too far or too much trouble to go to work."

Cyril was a good writer, as in evident from the closing section of his last letter to Bob, sent in January 1979.

He wrote: 'We had a quiet Xmas, both in bed by 8.30. Old Year's night I sat alone and viewed TV till closing-time, midnight. I then went onto our balcony. This year it was completely different from other years. Other years the black folk danced and pranced around, shouting "Happy New Year!" while banging away at old paraffin tins. Motorists went screaming past with their hooters blaring. Plus the night was lit up by a fireworks display. This year it was dead. I did not see one black person; no fireworks, and few motorists that did

go by went by in silence. Standing there I imagined to myself I was the only person alive; the rest of the world was dead. Our very best regards. Cyril & Lizzie (Babette).1

He was also an avid reader; he read all he could of JD McDonald and James Hadley Chase. He even read one of my books, a paperback of Dragon under the Hill, which he picked up and bought because the author's name was the same as his.

So he told me when I met him and his family in Johannesburg in September 1982; Cyril was then 66. He and Babette had a small house in Melville.

Cyril was a strong, tough character, with a hoarse gravelly voice; a man of evident integrity. He never met up thereafter with Ernie Lawless, or with John Honeycombe. They were in Durban after all, and Cyril was not too well. He died on 29 October 1984.

Babette, who went to live with her widowed daughter, Sandra, was 80 in December 1992.

tm H Esther Sees England, 1930

Esther also saw Scotland, Wales, and some of France, not to mention all the foreign ports where the ships that transported her across the world happened to dock. She was not alone. With her travelled her youngest son, Len, as well as Mr Len Ashworth, a hardware merchant, and his wife and teenage son, also called Len or Lennie. The idea for the trip had originated with Mr Ashworth, and it began for the two Honeycombes, mother and son, on 3 March 1930. It ended for Esther on 28 August when she returned to Melbourne for a few days before travelling back home to Ayr.

It must have been a memorable and marvellous adventure. Neither Esther, who was 50, nor Len, then 23, had been outside Queensland, and for many years their lives had been dominated by the demands of running the family store. They were the first Australian Honeycombes to return to their native land, which William Honeycombe, Len's great-grandfather, had left in 1850 on the Sea Queen.

Esther kept a sort of diary of the whole trip, there and back - jotting down in pencil on a little leather notepad such details she thought were worth recording, mainly of places and people visited and seen. She was clearly impressed by the names of people, the big cities, the poor weather, the poverty and dirt, but most of all by the scenery and antiquity of England's green and pleasant land. And by snow. The word she uses most often is'wonderful'. One wishes that the letters she wrote about her trip had survived.

Once the two Honeycombes and the three Ashworths had arrived in Southampton they were almost constantly on the go, driving (in a hired car) through counties, towns and villages the length and breadth of Britain: from Southampton to Inverness and Aberdeen; from the Lake District to the orchards of Kent; from Dover to Aberystwyth. Presumably it was Mr Ashworth who drove, assisted by Len, with the two women and teenage Lennie in the back. Perhaps Len also helped with the map-reading, a constant requirement as traffic, roads, and populated areas were much more dense than in Australia. There were no motorways then, and few four-lane roads, which tended to be narrow and winding and meander through villages and towns. Their destinations and routes were governed in part by the whereabouts of relations, friends and the families of friends, who had to be visited this once, for they would possibly never be seen again. Mr Ashworth, and Len, also had a list of manufacturers and businessmen to call on. But on some days they must have driven wherever fancy took them and the weather allowed. It seems they stayed overnight in whatever accommodation was available, generally choosing cheap and comfortable places out of town. Esther never mentions disagreements, but occasionally she felt tired, and cold. She apparently enjoyed going to the pictures, shopping and comparing prices and goods with those back home.

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We do not know whether Len or Esther looked in any telephone directories for Honeycombe names, or how near they came to some of the English Honeycombes as they drove from coast to coast. They never knew when they were in Edinburgh in June, that my mother was also there, preparing to give birth to my older sister, Marion, in August 1930 - who is now living in Peebles, where Len and Esther spent the night.

I have clarified the punctuation of her diary, as well as some of the spelling and the spelling of place-names. Where doubts still exist a (?) has been put.

In 1930, the Wimbledon singles were won by Teddy Tilden and Helen Wills Moody in July; the Great Depression was gathering pace after the Wall Street crash the previous year; airships were the latest means of travel; women in Britain had just been enfranchised on the same basis as men; the second Labour government was in power under Ramsay MacDonald; and George V had been king for 20 years. Princess Elizabeth was four years old in April 1930; her mother, the Duches of York, would be 30 in August, two months before my aunt, Dorothy Honeycombe. She had married Harold Barry in Bournemouth on 16 July 1930 - the day before Esther and Len Honeycombe left London for Paris, France.