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

The manhunt that ensued became the biggest in Australian history. During it Jimmy Governor and his brother settled other old scores by killing two 70-year-old farmers, a pregnant mother and her year-old son and by raping a 15-year-old girl. Jacky Underwood was soon caught and hanged. But it was not until 31 October that Joe Governor was surprised and shot by a grazier near Singleton, four days after Jimmy Governor was captured. He was hanged in January 1901, eighteen days after the foundation of the Commonwealth of Australia, and four days before the death of Queen Victoria. But neither of these historic events, nor the Boer War, nor the Boxer Rebellion in China, could have had such an impact on the McLennans of Honeycombe, and on every family immured in their lonely outback homes, as the Governor murders.

The actual and dire impact of several seasons of drought hit the Mackenzie River properties hardest in 1902, when Honeycombe was held by Alexander, William, James and Mary McLennan. At least half of their cattle, as

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elsewhere, perished. Then James McLennan died in an accident in 1905, and Ingle Downs was broken up and in due course Honeycombe was sold.

Arriving in Australia in 1854 - the same year that the explorer, Ludwig Leichhardt, named the Dawson and Mackenzie rivers - Bauman had married an Irish girl, and after working for the Dutton brothers of Bauhinia Downs, he had set up in business as a carrier, operating between Rockhampton and the west. The Baumans had a block on the Dawson River, but after being flooded out moved with their five sons and one daughter to Tryphinia on Dingo Creek. It was a sheep and cattle property, but by 1903 the sheep and been phased out. The previous year, half of the 7,000 cattle on the property had perished in a drought; other droughts had depleted livestock in 1884 and 1897.

One of the Bauman sons, Henry, whose early life was spent among his father's cattle and horses, once took over a thousand head of cattle from Tryphinia to Musselbrook in New South Wales. In 1890 he married a Miss Tierney of Rockhampton (they had six children, including five sons) and built what became the family home, Tryphinia View.

In 1908, Henry Bauman and his brother William bought Honeycombe, thus increasing the family's aggregate property to over 200 square miles. William Bauman made Honeycombe his home for several years. But when his health failed, it was taken over in 1915 by his brother Joseph Bauman. He moved there with his family from Charters Towers, where he had owned and run a successful dairy - but not while John Honeycombe was still working there.

Gordon Mackenzie says in his book that big mobs of bullocks were moved south to Tryphinia from time to time, and as the adjacent runs of Jellinbah, Tryphinia - Honeycombe and Leura were largely unfenced, 'the periodic musters to sort out the herds were big occasions, when teams of stockmen, black and white, from each station attended the muster... It was the day of the big camp, an occasion to meet, show off bush skills at the cut-out camp, and of course yarn-spinning round the fires at night. The Baumans had some good blacks working for them, and Fred Spookendyke and Honeycombe Johnny come to mind'.

Honeycombe Johnny - so at least the place gave someone a name, it not the other way round

In 1912, part of Honeycombe was 'resumed' by the government (sold off) and selected by Harold Katte. He renamed the 8,500 acre block Leichhardt Park and built a homestead on Parker's Creek.

Mackenzie says of the Kattes: 'They drove their sheep to the selection and these were shepherded by the growing family for some time until their cattle herd built up... Communications were bad, and educational facilities nonexistent. But Mrs Katte gave their children (there were six) a good grounding in practical education. Mail came from Blackwater, and the children rode 13 miles

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(north) to Honeycombe - the only crossing of the river - for mail and meat. During the 1918 flood, Mr Katte was away from home, and returned to find that his wife had been on the roof of the house for two days'.

Lome Mackenzie, who came to Queensland with his parents in 1892 when he was 18 and in time acquired several properties (the family homestead was at Telson), was the father of Gordon Mackenzie, born in 1914. His history of the area was published when he was 72. In it, he tells of the travelling salesmen, or hawkers, who served the needs of the isolated homesteads. These outback homes had no regular communications link with anyone until, in 1919, Jim Wafer started the Royal Mail service (a wagon and four horses) between Dingo and Barwon Park, a distance of 85 miles.

Most of the early hawkers were Indian or Lebanese. Mackenzie writes: 'Their wagons, buckboards, and later motor trucks, were stocked with a wide range of goods, from bolts of cloth to saddlery, bright cotton for the blacks, and ... patent medicines... Being born traders, they had an uncanny knack of knowing what a potential buyer might want - nothing being too much trouble to produce and put on display1.

Race meetings and race balls were the social events of the year; at other times picnic races were held and rodeos. In 1926, the Mackenzie River Amateur Race Club was formed, and yearly meetings were held at Honeycombe until the outbreak of war. 'Campers arrived a day or so before and set up a canvas village on the riverbank. Horses came from as far away as the Central Line, the Isaac River District, and Capella... An open-air dance-floor was constructed and dancing went on till early morning to the music of piano and accordion, and later to a four-piece band from Rockhampton... It was a great get-together for the River people'.

In 1928 the first large herd of Brahman cattle came to Leura from Christmas Creek. Leura was then owned and run by the Beak family (as it is to this day). One of the drovers who helped out on that drive was George Butcher junior, grandson of John Honeycombe the gold-miner.

Other herds were generally made up of Aberdeen Angus or Hereford cattle. The eradication of the prickly pear menace by the outbreak of the Second World War opened up much of the Big Bend country for development. Before that, drought and floods, fire, disease and death, had wrought constant changes in the size and ownership of properties. Stations grew and dwindled; homesteads were burnt down or rebuilt elsewhere. Dynastic marriages were made; the more than middle-aged retired to villas in Rockhampton.

Big losses of stock caused by the floods of 1916 and 1918 forced Joseph Bauman to sell Honeycombe and move to Redbank, a few miles north of Dingo. The property was bought by Edward Adams. He sold it to Jack Edgar. The next

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In May 1989, Kylie Maguire wrote: 'Honeycombe is situated 100km north of Dingo on the Mount Flora beef road. Dingo is situated 150km west of Rockhampton. There are no original buildings on Honeycombe now. The oldest remaining piece of history is a grave. The person buried there is James McLennan, who died in 1905 at the age of 46. Apparently he was killed while chasing brumbies. Honeycombe is 15,000 acres in size consisting mainly of flat black soil brigalow country'.

About 20 miles southwest of Honeycombe is Ashgrove. In 1919 it was selected by two of the eight Laver brothers, Les and Roy, who had come north from Gippsland They sold Ashgrove in 1936, but not before Roy Laver had married Melba Roffey and produced a son called Rod - who in 1962 became the first Australian tennis player to win the French, English and American mens' singles' titles, the Grand Slam.

Two other Laver brothers, Arthur and Bert, owned the property nearest Honeycombe, called Gordon. The fact that Gordon and Honeycombe are situated within a few miles of each other is a specially pleasing coincidence to this author.

But I regretfully doubt whether any Honeycombe ever owned, or named, Honeycombe. For the map shows not just Gordon in the vicinity. Across the river is not only Honeycomb Creek, but Bee Creek. And off to the right is Apis Creek. Apis is the Latin for a bee.

The man who first named these places must have had bees on the brain , or have been stung or have stolen their honey.

There seems little doubt that the 19th century spelling of what appeared to be an ancestral Honeycombe homestead was quite exact, and that the property properly bears the name of the homestead of the bee - honeycomb.

There are two other places called Honeycomb in Australia - there may be more. One is in Queensland, not that far from the Honeycombe homestead in the Big Bend country . South of Clermont and about 120km west of Honeycombe is the Honeycomb Lead.

It lies on the outer edge of the once active Clermont goldfield, south of McDonald's Flat, and is set apart from all the other gold leads and reefs in the area. A book, Gold and Ghosts, says: 'When discovered in 1894, some 200 men rushed to the area and started prospecting along the course of the lead. At the head of the gully, the lead occurs on the surface. But the further east it was traced the deeper it became, until at 7.6m the bottom was still not found. Further sinking became impossible, due to too much water and the lowering of the gold yield'.

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The other place called Honeycombe known to me in Australia is in Western Australia, some 85km north of Perth.

One day I was driving along the Brand Highway on the way to view the scenic yellow desert area of the Pinnacles when a signpost north of Gingin caught my eye. It pointed to a road going inland and said Honeycomb. Investigating, I came to a gateway by a T-junction, and on the ironwork of the gate was the legend HONEYCOMB. A short drive led through a well-tended garden to a modern house, where a middle-aged woman came to the door. No, she didn't know why the property was called Honeycomb, but as there was a Bee Creek not far away, she supposed it had something to do with bees. No Honeycombes had ever lived there as far as she knew.

But she knew a Honeycombe, she said. Her son was going out with a Karen Honeycombe who lived in Geraldton. Good heavens - what a coincidence, I thought.

I knew Karen and had met her at the Honeycombe Heritage Weekend in Cornwall in September 1984, which had been attended by 160 Honeycombes, not all so named of course, from most corners of the English-speaking world. Karen had then been married to Sandy Honeycombe of New Zealand. They were now divorced. And now she was being wooed by the son and heir of Honeycomb, WA. Would they marry? And would a Honeycombe, albeit by name, live at Honeycomb again?

Alas, they didn't. And this Honeycomb, like that other homestead in the Big Bend country in Queensland, merely commemorates the product of the bee, and not ancestral territory won and named and lost.

Was John Honeycombe ever aware in Crocodile Creek of the thousands of acres to the west that bore his surname? Did someone ever tell him about it? It they did, he must have wondered, as I once did, how and why the property got its name, and whether a lost inheritance was involved. For out of such land could fortunes be made and dynasties founded. But not John's. His and his children's destinies lay elsewhere.

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In 1893 John Honeycombe's family were back in Charters Towers, which they had left nine years ago. We know no reason for the move. But it was possibly connected with family troubles and with the fact that the Towers was now a hive of industry and enterprise. In the Honeycombes1 absence much had changed, and most of it was good.

By 1893 the town's amenities had been expanded by the introduction of gas mains, by a local telephone system and an adequate water supply. Churches and masonic lodges had proliferated, as well as schools. There was even music in the evening air, after the daytime din of batteries, crushing mills, wagons, carts and trains had faded away. For the Salvation Army and the Fire Brigade both had bands; there was also the Apollo Orchestra, a City Choir (they performed The Messiah), a Glee Club and an Operatic Society. Sporting activities involved many more people. There was football, rugby, cricket, boxing, athletics, and a new fad, cycling. Race meetings continued to attract the greatest crowds: a race-course had been the first sporting circuit to be made. Races were not, however, confined to horses. There were also goat-and-cart races. At one time the number of goats rummaging in backyards, commons and in the streets (10,000 in 1880) exceeded the number of townspeople. Goats were also the main providers of meat, miik and cheese.

All these sporting events, sometimes held in temperatures as high as 35 degrees, induced a great amount of drinking and gambling. Thirsts were generally quenched by a local beer, Anchor Beer, made by a brewery on the banks of the Burdekin River at Macrossan, until it was all but demolished in a flood in 1892. The brewery was then moved to the Towers, where most of its products were consumed. A draught beer, known as Polo, was sold in cork-stopped bottles with the cork wired in; later, bottled beer was sold as Towers Beer or Towers Bitter, and there was also Terrier Stout.

In the 1890s Charters Towers was characterised by dust, bustle and noise. The fever of gold, the euphoria of sudden riches and material success lent the town an extraordinary energy. Commercial entreprises thrived and speculation of every kind was rampant. A Stock Exchange had been built in 1889 and did a roaring trade. Although several banks and businesses went bankrupt in 1893, the town and its people prospered. That year, 256,000 ounces of gold were extracted from the ore.

Mary and her children may in fact have returned to Charters Towers in 1892. For according to an electoral roll John was registered as being in the area of the Stockholm mine in October 1892. We know, however, that he was a mine manager at Mt Hedlow during 1893. It seems that he and Mary separated about this time, when she was pregnant with her seventh and last child. There may have been a row about his absences and unfaithfulness. Or about her delusions

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and moods. Or he may have decided he had had enough of his wife and five surviving children and packed his bags and walked out.

If he was living in a hotel he must have had some money to spend on himself, apart from providing for the separate upkeep of his children and his wife. This he continued to do, it seems, in a minimal way, concerned for their welfare but not too closely concerned. He was aware of his responsibilities, but was not shy of putting himself and his pleasures first. One gets the impression he was fond of good food and drink and female company and enjoyed a night out with his mates.

It was in 1893 or soon thereafter that the mental and physical health of Mary Honeycombe, now 40, took a turn for the worse.

It has been said that the death of her second son, Frank, affected her greatly and that she became very depressed - so much so that she became something of an alcoholic. Her depression may have been exacerbated by her husband's presumed infidelities, and his absences, and by the birth of her last child, Nellie. Perhaps Mary could no longer cope without her husband and with the strain of trying to bring up seven children, although by this time Willie, who was now 14, was working in a mine. Or had John left her to move in with a younger woman - he was now 51 - endeavouring to recapture some of the lost joys of his youth and escape from the humdrum pressures of family life?

According to his grandson, Bob Honeycombe, John was compelled in 1894 by the breakdown in his wife's health to put her in a nursing-home (at Lismore in New South Wales) and to leave the youngest children with family friends and relatives, while he took the two eldest boys, Willie (Bill) and Bob, then aged 15 and 11, down to Geelong, to stay with his much older sister, Jane Mountjoy, and her husband.

This tradition is only partly correct. For it seems that Mary was never in Lismore, although she was not too far away. And although there was some kind of crisis in the family in 1894, when Mary may have had a breakdown, her incarceration in the alleged nursing-home - in fact a mental hospital - did not happen until 1900.

But it is almost certain that John's journey south with his two eldest boys did occur in 1894, if not before. It had to have occurred while Bob was still of an age (and Willie) to be sent to school. And if Mary was indeed hospitalised at that time, her youngest children, the three little girls and Lawrie would certainly have been placed in some relatives' care.

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According to another family source, both boys were offered a home by Jane and both turned the offer down. This seems more likely. For John would surely have welcomed the chance to offload his sons, at least financially, and provide them with a better chance in life.

If this had happened, how different Bob's life would have been, and longer, if he had remained with his aunt where apple trees grew.

While John was down south in 1894 he would very likely have seized the opportunity to visit his old haunts and cronies in Ballarat and Melbourne. No doubt he called on his older brother Richard, who was now 64, and introduced his two young sons to him. Probably they all stayed in Melbourne for a while with Richard in Albert Street, or with one of his four sons, who had families of their own and were well established in Footscray, Fitzroy and Yarra. Perhaps there was a family reunion in Albert Street at Christmas, attended by Richard and Elizabeth's seven children, the youngest of whom was 29, and by their wives and husbands and the 14 Honeycombe grandchildren, the latest being Lilian, third child of Richard the younger. When Willie and young Bob left Melbourne they were not to know that they would never return, and never see their cousins again.

So John and his sons returned to Queensland, and Willie to the mines. Bob would follow him thither a year or so later.

John, we know, was back working in Charters Towers in 1895, as a record exists of him being the manager of the Stockholm Mining Company in that year, a post he held for about twelve months. He then spent some months in 1896 as the manager of the Livingston Mining Company, an adjacent mine, until he returned to the Stockholm, working there until 1897.

The Stockholm mine was seven kilometres southwest of town, not far from the Black Jack mine. The temperature there, as in Charters Towers, would veer between 30 and 40 degrees in the arid Queensland summer. At other times the skies would be rent by colossal thunderstorms; flood-waters would surge down dried-up creeks; occasionally bush fires scoured the land. Flies and mosquitos were a plague, although they would find little nourishment in the tanned, thickened skin of the faces and hands protruding from the coarse clothes worn by the overdressed miners' families. How inured these people must have been to discomfort of all sorts, magnified for the men below ground by the choking dust and sweating, lamp-lit darkness of the holes they dug in the ground. No ice-cold drinks awaited their twilight return to their airless, dusty, fly-blown huts -just tea and beer and a smoke, and a plate of stew.

John's second son, Bob, would eventually find work in the Stockholm, and Willie probably went to work in the Black Jack mine on returning to Charters

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Towers from Geelong. Both mines had been opened up by Black Jack Thomas, one of whose daughters Bob would one day wed.

During this period, John Honeycombe, although he worked out of town, lived in some comfort on his own, not like his two teenage eldest sons, who probably boarded, if not with their mother, with families or in bachelor quarters near the mines where they were employed. John, after all, was a mining manager, and in 1895 he is recorded as living in Hackett Terrace in the Towers. In 1896 he was in Maloney Street, in what seems to have been a boarding-house occupied by single men. But he seems to have left Charters Towers early in 1897, as by 20 March 1897 his name disappears form the electoral roll.

His daughter, Annie, who was born in February 1891, would say many years later that she could never remember seeing her father. If this is true, the family crisis in 1893-94 must have been severe and the division of the family complete.

Where was Mary Honeycombe during these years? Where were their children? One imagines that the four youngest - Jenny (who was ten in 1895), Lawrie, Annie and Ellen (who was two) - were living with their mother. Bob may have been with her as well. If so, despite what payments John may have made for their upkeep, Mary must have had a fairly difficult time. She probably took a job as a cleaner or as a domestic in some rowdy hotel, reverting to the kind of occupation, even that of dish-washer or barmaid, that had been hers when she and John first met. When he left Charters Towers, seemingly in 1897, her situation, and her alleged drinking habits, must have got worse.

But it seems she was a good Irish mother, putting her children before anything else. One of Mary's grand-daughters, Alma, said of her and her children: 'She looked after them and fed them well; she stayed home with them. They were well brought up children and didn't run wild; they went to church and that sort of thing. Their mother was a Catholic, but the children were all Protestants. They didn't have much of an education, and they were all very shy: they didn't mix with anybody. There wasn't much family visiting, except on occasional Sundays. If you didn't have money, you couldn't travel. So you just stayed home.'