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

On 22 August, 123 men from northern Queensland embarked on the SS Bombola at Townsville, heading for the state capital, Brisbane. By 3 September,

1,849wereincampatEnoggera. Few NCOs had any training. One new company was asked: 'Is there anyone here who would like to be a Sergeant?' The first Australians to die in the war fell on 12 September, in a skirmish against the Germans at Rabaul, New Britain. They were Able Seaman WGV Williams and Captain BCA Pockley. Then Australia's first submarine, the AE 1, went missing; 35 lives were lost.

A Honeycombe died of a wound that November, but not in the war.

Bob's second small son, Dick, somehow contracted tetanus. But how? Said Mabel many years later: 'Whatever it was he took sick. He was all right when he had his bath before he went to bed - he was lively. During the night he took sick. Mum said she never seen a sore on him. Early in the morning, four o'clock, he died in the hospital. Terrible thing - he was such a healthy boy.'

He died on 14 November 1914, aged 5%.

There is a photo that shows all Bob's children and his wife - Donald had not been born then - in August or September that year. It was taken when they returned home after a Sunday service at St Paul's Church. Nobody smiles. Little Dick stares in apprehension, a hand grasping his sister Mabel's knee.

It was a disastrous war for Australia. Nothing was gained, except pillars of commemorative stone that sprouted in every community. The price of glory was very high: Australian casualties totalled 226,000 of whom 60,000 were killed or died on active service, many through disease - a colossal waste of manpower in the emergent nation.

In Queensland, natural disasters echoed those in distant Europe. Towards the end of 1916 an intense inland depression following a cyclone resulted in a calamitous flood. As much as 20 inches of rain fell overnight; rivers and creeks swelled and burst their banks. At daybreak, the little town of Clermont was inundated and washed away - it was later rebuilt on higher ground - and 62 people lost their lives. The torrential rains continued. On New Year's Eve, 1917, the Flinders River overflowed, causing the worst flood ever seen in the Hughenden area; five people died. In 1917, when Bob was working at the Lady Marie mine, the rainfall in Charters Towers was the third highest [4068 points] since records began in 1882, and the January and February of 1918 were together the wettest ever known. Further south, the port of Mackay was struck that January by the second most intense cyclone to hit the Queensland coast. The barometer fell to 27.5 inches, and 65 inches of rain fell in four days, during which a tidal surge also swamped the town. Rockhampton's worst flood followed when the Fitzroy River burst its banks. In March another cyclone, the state's third worst, devastated Innisfail.

Towards the end of 1917 Bob's health had deteriorated so much that he could no longer work in the fatally dusty mining industry. His last employment

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connected with mining was apparently at the Mary Louisa Mill, once part-owned by his father-in-law.

In 1918 Bob and his family moved back to the heat and flies of Macrossan, where he was employed as a pumper.

Water was pumped up from the Burdekin River into two large elevated tanks, which provided the water for railway-engine tenders. Having learned in the mines how to operate the Cornish boiler, a mining-engine (in fact Bob held a steam ticket), he was adept at this task. His job was to keep the tanks filled and the steam-engines that did the pumping fully operational: they were housed in a shed. But as clanking trains passed through Macrossan at night as well as by day, the hours of work were irregular as well as physically demanding - and Bob was very ill. Sometimes his two eldest sons helped him, young Bob, aged 11 in 1918, and seven-year-old Bill. Their task was to signal when the gauge of each tank showed that it was full. Any errors on their part resulted in a hiding or blows. For any wastage of the water was reported by the ganger to head office and Bob would be strongly rebuked. Although he was sometimes too sick to drag himself, coughing and gasping for breath, his lungs on fire, to the pumps -go to work he must, for no work meant no pay.

One day Bob collapsed with exhaustion and passed out. Young Bill fetched young Bob, and the two boys did their father's work as best as they could. This happened more than once.

The Honeycombes lived in a railway house, which had four rooms and a verandah. The kitchen, a fire hazard, was separate from the house and occupied a lean-to in the back yard, as did the outside toilet. Water was collected from wells. The windows were corrugated iron oblongs that were pushed out and propped open from within. The floor was made from ants' nests. This material, called 'ant-bed', compacted into a rock-hard surface and easily swept, was a feature of most miners' homes.

The railway line ran past the Honeycombes' home, and on the other side of the Burdekin River was the Sellheim Meatworks and its odours of death. Long trains brought cattle in their hundreds to the meatworks to be slaughtered, their frozen carcases then being transported onwards to Townsville, where they were shipped overseas to England. The first successful shipment of frozen beef and mutton to London from Australia had arrived in 1880, a landmark in Australian economic history.

When the family moved to Macrossan, young Bob had been taken from the Central State School in Charters Towers and transferred to the Boys State School, where he eventually played cricket for the school. 'I was not a bad bat,' he said later. 'I was a fairly good bowler too, because I was tall.' The opposition

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By the end of the First World War, in November 1918, the Honeycombe children numbered five. Bob and Lena's last child, a boy, having been born in Charters Towers in August that year. Since the death of Dick in 1914, Lena had wanted another child. But she refused to give him any Honeycombe names. Christened Percival Donald, he became known as Don. His childhood was spent in Macrossan. Although Gladys was working in the Towers, Mabel, aged 13, still lived at home, as did her young brothers, Bob and Bill.

Bob the father was a strict man, even severe. His illness and frailty cannot have lightened the general burdens of his responsibilities and work. He believed that children should be seen and not heard and do as they were told. He was a man of very few words and the children soon understood he meant what he said. Although he was particularly hard on Gladys and made life difficult for her, he was hardest on himself, driving himself on and refusing to accept charity of any kind, or to retire.

It was in the autumn of 1918, when Gladys was 17, that she became pregnant. As a result, she was banned by her father from the family home. He would not allow anyone to see her, or speak of her again. Only Lena disobeyed.

Gladys in 1918 was a small, lively girl, busy and bright, with big brown eyes - 'a good stamp of a girl, and well-spoken,' according to Mabel. 'Gladys had the life. I was a quiet little girl then. She wouldn't stay home like me... She left school at the age of 15 years [in 1916] and went to work at a dress-maker's house. She had to keep the house tidy while the dress-maker was sewing. The dress-maker also showed Gladys how to sew. She took to sewing very well and was then able to do her own sewing. She liked plenty of nice clothes.' Gladys, aged 17, made Mabel's confirmation dress and veil when Mabel, aged 13, was confirmed in St Paul's Church, after which Mabel began going to church three times a day.

Gladys also worked as a domestic in a hotel, and there she may well have met the father of her child. Or it may have been in Gladstone, where it seems she was employed for some months in 1918. By the end of that year Gladys' pregnancy must have become known to her mother, if not before. Perhaps Lena knew of it before Gladys left the Towers. Who else knew? Probably very few at the time, and possibly not even the baby's father. But in May 1919 Gladys was in Rockhampton, where she gave birth to a boy in the Bethesda Salvation Army Hospital in Talford Street. In those days Bethesda took in pregnant single girls who had nowhere else to go; it was also a children's home. Gladys' baby was christened Ernest.

Why Rockhampton rather than Gladstone, or Townsville? Perhaps Selina had a trusted female relative, a sister, in Rockhampton. Perhaps Gladys had a friend there.

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The birth and death of little Ernest Honeycombe present several knotty problems. Is it possible that Lena, even before her marriage to Bob, posed as Gladys' aunt, and that Gladys was introduced into Bob's family after the marriage, and became an honorary Honeycombe like Ernest? Gladys could have been presented as the unfortunate offspring of one of Lena's sisters. On the other hand, Lena could really have been her aunt.

Who was Gladys' father? Was Lena her mother? Was Bob her father? Alas, we shall never know. Nor will we ever discover who was the father of Gladys' child. We only know that her baby was buried the day after he died, in Charters Towers cemetery, in a grave unmarked except for a spike, numbered 6092.

Gladys went west after her baby's death, west of Hughenden. She found work as a domestic servant on a cattle station, cooking for the manager's wife.

Was she sent away from the Towers, to avoid any further gossip and other mishaps? Probably not. The baby died, after all, in some family home in Black Jack Road, not in an anonymous lodging. And Gladys was a girl of some spirit. It seems likely that she made her own decision to distance herself from the scenes of her recent grief and shame and from the prospect of ever seeing her seducer again, and indeed her family. Only Lena stayed in touch with her.

It was in 1918 that Bob Honeycombe received a letter from a minister in Kalgoorlie, probably Archdeacon Collick, asking for some money for Bob's destitute father, John. Young Bill was present when a violent argument ensued between his father and mother about whether any money should be sent. 'Your father has never done anything for you in your life!' cried Lena. But £5 was sent, and the family were on short rations for a week.

Bob himself, though not quite destitute, was extremely ill. In 1922, at the age of 39, he was forced to give up working. He must have known that he was dying, his body torn by the coughing, the disease that had destroyed his older brother, Willie.

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Two years earlier, Bob senior's youngest sister, Nellie, had married William McHugh, a railway-engine driver, in Charters Towers. That was in September 1920, when she was 27. According to her niece, Mabel: 'She was a very lively person, very different to my father. He was a very quiet man.' Bill McHugh, according to Mabel, was also' a very quiet man.'

Mabel had remained at home when she left school, aged 15, and helped her mother around the house. 'I led a lady's life,' she said ironically. But when her father's illness prevented him from working, she, as well as young Bob, had to supplement the family income and get a job. In 1923, when she was 17, she became a 'nurse girl' with a family in Charters Towers. She lived in, looking after two young children. 'I wouldn't do any other work,' she said. 'I loved the children - they were so well-behaved.1

By this time, Mabel's elder sister, Gladys, had married. She met her future husband, Norman Creffield, on the cattle station west of Hughenden where she had worked as a domestic and cook since 1920. The property was owned by Tom Ball. Norman's grandfather is said to have been a wheelwright in Birmingham in central England, and his father, Walter John Creffteld, achieved an accidental distinction by being the first white boy to be born on Sweers Island. Norman was a wool-carrier, and a cane-carrier in the cutting season; he had established himself as such by borrowing the money to buy a motor-vehicle.

He and Gladys married at Richmond, over 100km west of Hughenden, in September 1922. She was just 20. They settled there, before moving to Townsville and then on to Ayr in 1932.

Mabel said of Gladys: 'She wanted me to come out with her when she got married, but I wouldn't. She was out there (in Richmond) for years... Norman was a very nice chappie and a very good husband to Gladys. They had five nice children (three were boys) and were a very happy couple.'

Gladys never left Queensland. She wouldn't fly: she was frightened of planes, and only went away once, to Magnetic Island. Yet she became one of the first women in Queensland to drive a truck. Norman became a master butcher. He started as a slaughterman in a killing yard, then took over a butcher's shop in Ayr. Twice he travelled overseas, to New Zealand, and to the land of his ancestors, England. Gladys lived in Ayr for 50 years, and there she died, the secrets of her past dying with her, in August 1983.

Mabel met her own future husband, Sam Kettle, at a party in Charters Towers; she was just 18. Mabel couldn't dance - 'I wouldn't dance' - but they often went to the pictures together. They became engaged towards the end of 1924; but there was no engagement party as her father, Bob, was a very sick man.

Meanwhile, young Bob had begun to look for better employment, away from the meatworks. Although his sisters no longer lived at home, there were

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A month or so later, in October 1924, his father, Bob, was at last persuaded - much against his will, one imagines (and too late) - to see a doctor in Townsville. Lena went with him, taking little Don, who was now six, with her, removing him temporarily from the Macrossan State School where he had just started attending classes. The three of them lodged with one of Esther Honeycombe's relatives in Townsville, while Bob and Young Bill, who was now 13, remained behind.

Bob senior visited a herbalist, but nothing could be done to save him.

Was he told this, or did he and Lena know without being told? How often did they recall his brother Willie and the manner of his passing? Bob must have known his death was near, and as with Willie his final resolve was to get on a train and to go back home. Gut a similar destiny dogged his feeble steps.

On 3 November 1924, Bob dragged himself from his death-bed, no doubt despite Lena's entreaties, and turning his back on hope and his face towards home, he set off with his wife and small son for Townsville Station. Bob was without a brother to support him and clung needfully to his wife; Little Don ambled beside them. Bob was painfully thin now and gaunt, making Lena seem correspondingly shorter and stouter. It was a hot morning, dusty and still.

That short journey was his last. They reached the station and the westbound platform, and Lena went to a ticket office to get a railway pass, leaving Bob with his little son. In her absence Bob suddenly collapsed, and died. He died on the station platform, and the train went west to Charters Towers without them.

Don was taken care of by two nuns and a Salvation Army officer until his mother could compose herself. The nuns stayed with Lena for the rest of that day, helping her through her grief and to make arrangements for Bob's body to be taken to Charters Towers.

The railways company transported his body back to the Towers free of charge, and that same evening his widow and small son, Don, sat in the guard's van by the coffined body as the train jolted and rattled inland. It stopped specially at Macrossan, where Lena left the train to fetch her teenage sons, Bob and Bill. They returned to the waiting train. 'Your dad is in the back,' Lena said.

The weeping boys sat on the guard's van floor as the train moved off, reaching the Towers late at night. There the shattered family were met by Bob's married sisters, Annie Reardon and Nellie McHugh, no doubt already wearing black.

The following day, Bob's body was brought to the McHughs1 home and briefly laid out for all to see. Bob's sisters were very supportive, and his colleagues on the railways collected a large sum of money, £40, for his widow and her children. There was no widow's pension then.

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Bob was buried in Charters Towers later that day, on 4 November 1924. He was 41.

Out of the money Seiina received, she paid for a stone to be erected over his grave, commemorating his death and that of their second son, Dick. Seiina would be a widow for 40 years.

A few days after the funeral, 17 year-old Bob received a letter from the railway company - his application had been accepted. And another family association with the railways was forged that would last for half a century, until Bob retired in 1974.

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Young Bob was 17 when he started work as a lad porter on the railways at the end of November 1924. His first job was at the station in Townsville, where his father had died.

He remained as a lad porter for about a year, earning 22/6 a week. Of this, 15 shillings went to pay for his board and lodging in Townsville; he sent 5 shillings home to his mother, and lived each week on the remaining 2/6. He would continue to support his mother and younger brothers financially for the next 12 years.

Meanwhile, the death of his father and his own departure for Townsville had determined his mother's return to Charters Towers, where friends and relatives were at hand. Her memories of Macrossan would not have been happy ones.

Don: 'My mother moved the family from Macrossan back to Charters Towers, and rented a house in Regent Street for eight shillings a week. In those days there was no widow's pension to assist women with families and my mother cleaned the High School for £4.4.0 a month.' The High School had opened in 1912, with an initial enrolment of 157 pupils. This worked out at less than £1 a week... My elder brother, Bob, who was 17 at the time, sent my mother money, which went towards our feeding and education.'

The Charters Towers of 1925, according to Don, was 'a desolate and depressing town.' The population had fallen to some 7,000. 'Empty shops, vacant land, mullock heaps of stones from the mines, poppet legs over old goldmines, none of them working, were everywhere. There were deep holes in the ground, uncovered, making it possible for anyone to fall in, and over all this were rubber vines, bottle trees and Chinese apple trees, all trees and shrubs of a dirty and untidy nature. In among this people had thrown their bottles and tins, and goats roamed unchecked.'

Until 1926, Don went to the State Infants School, then to the State Boys School, where he remained until 1930, before entering the High School, which his mother cleaned daily on her hands and knees. He was not a keen scholar and won no prizes. But in later years he said: 'My mother's efforts in giving me the benefit of an education gave me a fuller and happier life.'

He was more adept at sport. At Primary School, he set up a record for the 100 yards, and he competed for the High School in athletics, football and cricket. He also took up tennis, like Bob, and for many years he played tennis for the Church of England team in Charters Towers and then for a team called the Pagans. He said: 'I might never have won any gold cups. But I got much enjoyment from the games I played.'

He and his older brother, Bill (William George), were also choirboys in St Paul's Church. According to Mabel, Bill was 'a good sport in every way - medals

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Bill left the High School in 1928, whenjie was 17. He became a clerk.

By this time an unexpected industry had established itself in Charters Towers, which had become known for its excellent schools and schooling; and the children of Queensland were increasingly sent there to receive a good and thorough education.

Apart from the State School, and two large Catholic boarding-schools - St Mary's (for girls) and Mount Carmel (for boys) - a Methodist/Presbyterian school, Thornburgh, had opened in 1919, in the former residence of the Hon EHT Plant. Another mansion, Yelvertoft, had been converted into a sister school, for girls. Renamed Blackheath, it opened in October 1920, in the same year as a Church or England foundation, All Souls. This boys' school was established by the Brotherhood of St Barnabas as a memorial to those who died in the Great War, and the 16 original boarders were housed in yet another old residence, Matlock. Its sister school, St Gabriel's, opened in February 1921. All Souls in time became one of the largest and best boarding-schools in Australia.

But there was little happening of general interest in Charters Towers in the 1920s, as the effects of the post-war depression began to bite. The town was saved from becoming a shadow of itself, if not a ghost town, by its schools and by several new businesses, like a butter factory and a worsted and woollen mill. A mocking echo of former glories was the finding of a huge gold nugget, weighing 143 ounces, in April 1921. It was called the Prince of Wales.

There was little local excitement - apart from the fires that periodically flared up in the town.

The Exchange Hotel was destroyed on a frosty morning in June 1926. A year and a half later, on Christmas Eve, the Miners' Hotel was burnt to the ground. In 1929, on New Year's Day, four shops between the Courthouse Hotel and the Caledonian House were gutted. And in April 1933, the two-storey Courthouse Chambers in Gill Street, up the road from the Kettles' home, went up in flames. The building included Vicary's boot-shop, a dress-shop, a surgery, a solicitor's office, and a hair-dressing salon.