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

That week the cane inspector makes a visit, and the rumour is that the mill will now close early in December. Bill writes that carting the cane has become less arduous: the amounts and lengths being smaller, the loading-point nearer, and their expertise greater. They are now earning 2/6 per ton, and in the first week in September they off-load 77 tons of cane onto the trucks.

September passes by. The last cold spells are followed by thunderstorms and rain; the weather warms up, until, in mid-September 'it is like on a desert in the cane fields you get no breeze.' Excursions relieve the drudgery of the working week; Bill and Jack assist in the branding of Soper's horses; Lawrie's football team, McDesme, wins the trophy, and the team have a photograph taken of themselves in Ayr for the North Queensland Register, then there is an outing on horseback on a Sunday, followed by dinner at the Rutherfords.

Lawrie takes up carting after his gang splits up; Bill and Jack go to hear a member of parliament speak at the school. The next day, a Wednesday, they dress up and ride in a buggy with others to Ayr, to hear the Labour MP for Rockhampton, William Kidston, speaking in a hall; and on the last Sunday of the

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On Friday, 10 September, Bill orders a new serge suit from Paddy Ryan for £4.15.0. So does Hughie. Jack orders a pair of trousers.

In the last full week of September they load 79 tons 17 cwt of cane onto the trucks, from which they make just under £5. Bill is still coughing, and a third bottle of cod-liver oil is sent by his wife. In its absence he uses salad oil.

His protestations of love increase, as does his anxiety about her loneliness and, conversely, her social activities. It seems he wishes her to be nun-like in his absence and as solitary and as apparently unsociable as he is. Not much of enjoyment is ever mentioned in his letters, only the anticipated happiness of their reunion. He gets 'a little narked' when one of her twice-weekly replies fails to appear - 'I feel a bit put out'. But their love remains his abiding concern, his reason for living. He strives to articulate what he feels. Sometimes he succeeds.

On 7 September he writes: 'I must still tell you how I love you, it helps me so much. I love you still with that never fading love, a love that you need never fear will ever die. As I grow older it grows stronger and it makes me do my work well my dear. I have something to be proud of in you, and when Len and Will grows up to be men, they will also look at their mother with pride and think how they will love you for your hard toil now. It is true dear what I say. It is hard to find many good men and women in this world dear. Well my love dont think I am trying to be nice, but I mean all I say.'

Local elections take place on Saturday, 2 October, Bill has a cold.

He writes: 'We went over to the McDesme school this morning at about 9 oclock and voted with the Absentees. We did not go in to Ayr tonight... I hope you voted but I hope you did not go up the street. I suppose you seen a lot you knew at the Polling Booth and I hope you went up with Tom and Agg...' Later: 'I have been wondering all day how you got on voteing and who you saw up Town the same old tale jealous, but I know you are a good girl.'

An errant husband - it seems he abandoned his wife in Charters Towers -turns up on Sunday, 3 October, Esther's birthday. This is Southy (Jack Southward), whose wife, Nell, has had a child in his absence.

Bill: 'They say it is hard to prove who's youngster it is.' Southy's return is to be kept quiet by the cane-cutters. 'He looks very well,' writes Bill. 'He is terrible fat. he has been working in a butter factory down at Brisbane... He asked how you all were but never said anything of Nell. I said are you going up to the Towers Xmas and he said (bugger the Towers) and turned colour. I think he would have like to have a pitch, but he had Joe Thompson waiting in the trap, he said he would come up some night through the week and have a talk of old times... He said the reason he left was he got into trouble here, he told us all of it but I could not explain it all here... I think he would have liked to say something before, but did not know how. Well my dear men are deceitful, but I can truly say I am true to you...'

Southy visits again on the night of Monday, 11 October.

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'He stayed till 11 oclock Jack him and I all down at the trucks in our working togs pitching. He asked after every one and then he asked how Nell was getting on. he said poor old Nell she has never answered my letter yet and that was all he said of her. he wanted us to say more of her I think but it was his place to inquire and he would if he loved her enough, but he did not forget to tell us the great time he had in Brisbane... I dont like him as I used to but dont tell Nell. I think she would be better to have someone else...'

By mid-October, the carters are working later, but still getting up at 4.0 am. They are filling five trucks a day and only have two more blocks of cane to clear. Bill calculates that they have carted 1000 tons of cane. Rumours about the date of the mill's closure abound and vary from week to week. Bill writes on 16 October: 'We are working hard now to get the cane off quick we are going all the time everyone the same the cutters work from daylight to dark every day all day Saturday and part of Sunday at present... I am used to it now, only batching it is a b—r you know what that means. I could cook my own, but I dont like cooking for others.'

He tells her of an accident: 'I was twitching up a chain on top of one of the trucks and it broke and I fell with my ribs on one of the standards of the truck and bruised my ribs... I can hardly lift anything. I feel alright only terrible sore.' The arrival of a letter from Esther cheered him that evening, but when he went back to work the following morning he 'swore like the devil it always helps me when I swear.'

Mr Rutherford now finds occasion to praise Bill's work. 'I think he expects me back next year to take it on my own, he says I would do well if I had it all and paid one wages man. but I dont think I want anymore of it'

Bill sends £10 to Esther via Lawrie, who goes to Charters Towers on 19 October on a week's visit and calls on Esther. Bill urges her to buy some clothes for herself for Christmas: 'I mean a dress or two for yourself never mind worrying over the bills you know as long as we have good health we will pay them.'

On 23 October an inch of rain falls in the morning. Jack is 'terribly disgusted' and Bill is 'terrible impatient.' He writes: 'I have no one here only workaway... I dont know how I stood it so long.' And now Alma has whooping cough. 'Len will get it next I suppose.' In fact they all became sick.

Lawrie returns to the McDesme farm on Monday, 25 October, with news of his visit. Bill has news for Esther of his own - on the same night Silver the mare has produced an overdue foal, a filly, 'a chesnut with a ball face.'

He and Jack are now working 'terrible long hours' and will begin filling 6 trucks the following week, carting burnt cane.

He explains on 30 October: 'It is poor cane and they burn it to clear the thrash of it. They burn every night, work half the night and all day. They cut a space through the cane just enough to do the day and then burn that and then it is easy to cut. Well dear I feel very tired... I still have the rotten cough the same, but I dont think it is my lungs I am sure it is sort of Indigestion.'

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Lawrie is not in a good humour after his visit to Charters Towers. It seems his girl-friend, Maggie, has let him down. He goes into Ayr to get drunk. Old Mrs Rutherford again suggests that the wives of Bill and Jack should come and stay. But Bill is doubtful - 'You know they have 3 or 4 men there for meals that is Ernie, Lennie, Old Sam, Pat and W Reaper from the Kirk, from Aberdeen.'

His one-page letter on 2 November makes him feel guilty - his excuse is that they have been working late. Carting burnt cane, he says, makes them look 'like niggers all day.' He reports that Silver has been put into a paddock with good grass and that 'the little foal is a regular draft one.' He is glad that the children are 'getting on alright,1 and that Esther's mother has been out staying with her. He yearns to go home.

Soon he will do so, as the end of the cane-crushing season approaches. Some farms have already finished cutting their cane: the Kalamia Mill closes down on 4 November. At McDesme the fields are bare 'but the young cane is shooting up again, some of it 3 ft high already."

There is uncertainty, however, about how Bill and Jack will make the homeward journey; Silver's foal is too young to travel and may have to be transported by train.

'I dont know what we will do yet... Lawrie might go with Jack and Hughie. I will try and sell Nigger. I would like to go up in the train...' He adds: 'We are going to have a bit of a spree when we cut out so they say, not much you know, only some whisky and cake and a bit of hurraying." And gallons of beer.

On Sunday, 7 November, Bill, Jack, Hughie and Lawrie visit the Southwards - 'Southy' having apparently been restored to his Nell. 'We had a nice day... The old man and Dick had to go away somewhere. Nellie and Clara Freeman were there. Clara Freeman seems a lot different now not flash at all. Nellie is a fair cook and we eat near all her tarts.'

Writing a one-page letter about this on the 9th, Bill says that he agrees with Esther about her not coming to McDesme. He also says: 'If you did not like Miss Y tell her to find another place, to H— with her. I suppose she thinks she is somebody.1 He concludes: 'Not many more letters to write now... I do not feel so bad now that the time is drawing near although I has no patience.'

Signing himself 'Bill H' now, he calls her 'my old Sweetie.'

Lawrie finishes working in the cane-fields on Saturday, 13 November. To fill in time before returning with the others, he works for a week on the Rutherfords' farm. By now Bill and Jack have moved on from carting the burnt cane to the last block of clean cane, although they are diverted onto another farmer's burnt fields for one day. They sent three men over this morning to pay us back, they helped us there was about 10 of us in the field working.'

Bill refers in his letter of the 13th to his father, John, who had written to him from Kalgoorlie on 6 July. Presumably Bill replied in August or September. Now

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He tells Esther: 'I am like you I am counting the days... Jack is terrible glad to get back, he gets quite excited when he thinks of it. he says he will never come here again... McMahons finish on Monday. We will be about the last out I thin'.'

But before this, the volume of work increases, until they are filling 8 trucks with the last of the cane. 'We can manage it I think, we sent in over 80 tons last week and we should send in about 100 this week... We are leaving our pay stand till we finish... We had £18.11 and some pence for the month that included per cent... We will be coming back with the team I think... I will have a nice talk to you soon. I am tired now.'

Bill's last letter from the camp at McDesme is written on Sunday, 21 November. He expects to finish work on the Tuesday and leave the camp on Thursday, 23 November.

'We have only a small patch to cut out now. we feel about done up when we are done of an evening... we will have to wait a day after we finish to get our weights... I may leave Silver here till the foal gets stronger. Jack may leave Kate and Bess here too as they are all running together with a horse of Sopers in his paddock.'

Lawrie, who is at the races this Sunday, is trying to forget about Maggie. 'I am glad too, 'writes his brother, 'as she would be no good to anyone.' Hughie is staying on for a fortnight. Writes Bill: 'He must have a good bit over £20 now and mean as (cat shit).'

Before they leave, a photograph is taken of the group by a farmer's son called Noakes.

Where is it now? Would that we could see Bill and his mates at the end of their five-month sojourn at McDesme, justly proud of their labours. Writes Bill: 'Our gang has been doing the best work on the lower Burdekin I think.'

His last letter to Esther ends: 'Well my dear old girl I am feeling glad to see my old girl again. It seems ages since I saw you. I am a regular old batchelor now. but I love my old girl like fire. I know you will be glad to see me again and so will the little ones and Len too. Well I must say Goodnight now my dear one and God bless you till I arrive, from your loving Husband Bill H. Kisses little ones xx xx xx xx xx xx you dear XXXX.'

In the margin is written an odd epitaph: 'Every night when we are turning in Jack always says oh well lie in our bed and stink but we never get time to stink...'

On 23 November a telegram was sent to Esther Honeycombe via her mother, 'Mrs E Chapman, Opp Pyrites Crossing... Lawrie Jack I leaving Thursday with team cut out. W J Honeycombe.'

He sent a postcard to Arthur Rutherford a few days later, in which he described his return to Charters Towers and later events. He wrote: 'Dear Arthur - Arrived home alright. The foal had a rough time, sore footed and nearly dead now. We came back too quick. I saw Hughie and he is full of his job and he told me to tell you he would be down on the 19th May. He would be glad to

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have his old job again. I saw P Butt today. He told me he was going down to cart cane. I told him we done well down there. I am out of work just at present. Your Old Friend Bill Honey.1

We do not know what, if any, employment he obtained after this. But he had to go on working, to provide for his young family. Mabel Kettle would later recall that 'Bill was a woodcutter, carting wood to the mines.'

The family seem to have remained at Black Jack until 1911, when Bill's address is given as Wington Flat, Charters Towers. Perhaps they moved back to the town to be nearer any job opportunities as well as to their relatives, the Chapmans and Butchers; Lawrie was also living in Plant St, Queenton, then.

Willie's daughter, Alma, years later described what family life was like in those days. She said: 'We were up at six o'clock, and then we were at school all day; we had a packed lunch, pasties or pies. We walked three miles there and three miles back, and we'd get home about four. The main meal was in the evening; mother would cook us a meal of meat and vegies. They came from the garden: carrots, tomatoes and potatoes; we also grew oranges. We lived off the land, but we didn't have very good soil, and not much water. About seven we were put to bed. I slept with Rene and Bill with Len. Mother and father stayed up till nine; there was no radio, so they played cards, or talked. He smoked a pipe. He was a nice man, although we didn't get to know him very well. In those days fathers were strict - but he never used to whack us. He was a loving man; he liked us. He wasn't sick when he got married. We were all born before he got sick.'

1910 was a very wet year. Not for 16 years had so much rain (nearly 4000 points) fallen on the newly designated city. The damp must have been damaging to Bill's labouring lungs, and early in 1911 he accepted an invitation from his younger brother Bob, to stay with him, his wife and four children in Hughenden, where the air was drier. 'That's where you go when you have lung trouble,' Alma would say many years later. Perhaps Bill also hoped to get some work in Hughenden.

Bob was 27 then and working as a pumper on the railways. But it seems he was able to accommodate Bill, Esther and little Len, who was then four. The other three of Bill's children seem to have been left with the invaluable Granny Chapman, to continue their schooling in the Towers.

But nothing could save Bill. A month after his 32nd birthday, it was decided that he must go to hospital for medical treatment and, very ill, he returned by train to Charters Towers with Esther and little Len. Bob travelled with them.

It is 155 miles from Hughenden to the Towers: the train journey then took over five hours. Sixteen miles west of Charters Towers Bill's tormented body could endure no longer. As he lay on a seat, in that dusty, rattling, swaying train, his heart gave out, and he died in his brother's arms. His wife wept. Little Len hid his face in his mother's skirt.

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Bill's body was taken off the train at Charters Towers and put in the morgue. He was buried the following day, on Thursday, 23 March, 1911. The funeral cortege left Granny Chapman's home,in Thpmpson Street at 3.30 pm, attended by members of the Royal Miners' Lodge.

Two years later his young widow left ths Towers and took her four children with her to Ayr - a move that would prove to be another turning-point in the history of the Queensland Honeycombes and would make one of Esther's grandsons a millionaire.

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9% 0 Bob The Father

In 1885, when Bob was two, the family moved from Charters Towers to Crocodile Creek where they remained for the next eight years. Bob went to school in Crocodile Creek when he was five, in the year that his older brother Frank fell off a butcher's cart and died.

By the time Bob was 10, in 1893, the family had moved back to the Towers, where his youngest sister, Ellen, called Nellie, the last child of John and Mary, was born.

When the family split up in 1894, Bob and his older brother Willie were taken south by their father to visit the Honeycombe relatives in Melbourne and Geelong. They stayed for a time with their Aunt Jane, Mrs Mountjoy, and her husband. Bob seems to have been his Aunt's favourite: she wanted to keep him in Geelong and give him a proper education. According to Mabel Kettle: 'John took the two boys to some Auntie of theirs. But the boys wouldn't stay. [The Mountjoys] had plenty of money my mother told me, and would have given the boys a good education and everything. But the two boys wanted to come back to Charters Towers, and he had to bring them back.'

So John Honeycombe took Bob and his brother away from the apple trees in the garden in Geelong, back to the scorching bush of Queensland. How different would their lives have been, and longer, if they had stayed. And, how vastly different the several destinies of their descendants. It was a turning-point in all their lives.

For three years, from 1894 to 1897, John worked in the Towers as a manager of a small mine, the Stockholm. It was probably here that young Bob began work as a miner, at the age of 12 or 13. Did he and Willie live with their father? Or were they boarded out with the Chapmans or Naughtons, like their younger brother, Lawrie, and their three little sisters? Wherever they were, their domestic circumstances would have been fairly basic, and would become much harder when the two elder boys went down the mines. Any formal education would then have had to be abandoned, although both learned to read and write.

In 1898, when Bob was 14 and an apprentice miner, his father left the Stockholm mine and, it seems, left Queensland altogether. For he next appears in the Western Australian gold-fields in 1904

By that time Bob had married Selina Thomas, known as Lena by her family and school-day friends. She preferred in later life to be called Selina.

They met as teenagers in the Towers in a boarding-house, where Lena was working as a waitress. Bob was lodging there: a slim and rangy blue-eyed

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Lena was very small and slim and dark, her Spanish blood glowing in her round face and eyes. When she was young she had dimples in her cheeks. She was nearly a year older than Bob, having been born in October 1882.

They apparently found each other irresistible. Their friendship bloomed and flowered, and in July 1901, when he was still 17 and she 18, she gave birth to a baby girl, Gladys, in Townsville. The birth occurred a year before Queensland's worst-ever drought: for seven months, from May to November, only eight points of rain fell in Charters Towers.

The fact that the baby was born in Townsville and not at home in the Towers, seems to indicate that Lena went away to avoid parental disapproval and local moral censure. Was there also some disapproval in the Thomas family - they were Catholics - of Bob, who was both young and impecunious and was no doubt blamed for Lena's misfortune? Was he in fact the father? After all, they may not have met until after Gladys was born. And she was christened Gladys Charles Thomas.

At any rate, it was not until three years later, a week or so after Bob's 21 st birthday, that he and Lena were wed: on 26 August, 1904, in Charters Towers.

Soon after the wedding Bob was smitten with double pneumonia. He was off work for several months.

About this time, on 26 October, the most violent storm ever to hit the area struck the Towers. Fred Bagnall's history of the town, Golden Heritage, relates: The goods-shed and engine room at the railway were stripped of their roofs and sheets of iron were scattered over a wide area. St George's church hall was lifted bodily and deposited in a nearby paddock. A large building at the Brilliant mine was entirely flattened. The hail which accompanied the storm was the largest ever seen in the Charters Towers, and was still lying in the streets the following day. Every garden in the city was stripped of its foliage and birds and domestic fowls were killed in hundreds. When the storm abated, the streets were covered in ice, and the guttering on most houses, and in some cases the verandahs, collapsed.'

Lena Thomas was one of the nine children of John Thomas and Mary Bethel. A short and swarthy Spaniard, John Thomas was popularly known as Black Jack, as were the two gold-strikes and mines he discovered in Charters Towers and Ravenswood. Said to have been bom in Gibraltar in 1825, he came to Queensland (via Sydney) in search of gold. His English was never very good, and very limited when he arrived in Sydney. Although he claimed to have had a father who was a solicitor and an uncle who was an admiral, this seems unlikely, as he could neither read nor write. But he may, as he claimed, have served on a

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British warship in the Crimean War. His name, John Thomas, was the English version, it is said, of its Spanish original.