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

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powered by a pedalling device. Messages could be sent on it in morse code, which was eventually superseded (bush people found it difficult to learn) by a transmitter like a typewriter keyboard.

So it was that Flynn chose Cloncurry, with its comparatively up-to-date telephone, telegraph, road and rail links as the base for the Flying Doctor Service, the first in the world.

Its creation was announced by Flynn in October 1927. The AIM were now able to provide some funds, and Qantas a plane, and a room at the rear of the Presbyterian Church in Uhr Street became the Service's office. Pedal wirelesses were made and distributed, although this took some time, and an advertisement for a 'flying doctor1 in the Medical Journal in December produced 23 replies. The final agreement between the AIM and Qantas was signed in March 1928, and on 15 May the first official flight was made, in a Dragon. Arthur Affleck piloted Dr Kenyon St Vincent Welch, late of Sydney, to Julia Creek, where he carried out two minor operations in the Bush nursing-home there.

Dr Welch made 255 emergency calls in that first year, as well as many flights to carry out vaccinations and set up local clinics. All medical care was free. The area covered was about the size of Britain, but weather conditions were very different, and working conditions could be all but unbearable in the searing heat of the insect-ridden bush. The flying doctors became very well known, as did the pilots who flew them, chiefly Arthur Affleck and Eric Donaldson. One day, a sister was taking a scripture lesson in St Joseph's Convent School (founded in 1909) and happened to ask the class: 'Who was Pontius Pilate?' To which one of the boys brightly replied: 'Eric Donaldson.'

All the pilots and flying doctors, like Drs Vickers, Alberry, Joyce and Harvey-Sutton, must have been known by Sugar Honeycombe. Possibly, they also knew him.

Lawrie was 40 in 1928. In December that year two talking pictures, The Jazz Singer and The Red Dance, were shown in Sydney. In 1929, Dame Nellie Melba made her last appearance in a concert in Geeiong, and a three-year-old chestnut called Phar Lap came third in the Melbourne Cup. As a four-year-old, this huge gelding (17.1 hands high) won all but five of 40 races, and as the 11-8 favourite won the Melbourne Cup in 1930. Two years later he died of poisoning, possibly intentional, in Mexico; he was six. In his short life Phar Lap became a legend. Perhaps Lawrie backed him to win more than once.

Phar Lap died in March 1932. Another, more local excitement occurred in Cloncurry that year: the Great Bank Robbery.

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Radio broadcasting was nine years old at the time, having begun in Sydney in November 1923 with the start of Radio 2SB. The fare consisted mainly of genteel light music and talks. The ABC did not begin broadcasting until July 1932, and the hugely popular radio serial about outback characters, Dad and Dave, would not be heard for another four years - it lasted for 15. Local radio, as far as Cloncurry was concerned, would not exist until the launch of 4MI atMtlsain1960.

Curiously, Sugar Honeycombe's name was associated later with the Great

Train Robbery in 19 It was thought by some that Sugar, being a guard, must

have had inside information as to the train's contents and security, as well as its speed and times. It is possible that gullible Sugar was an unwilling informant. But no tales are told of his sudden wealth after the robbery. Indeed, it has been said of him that 'he never had any money'. Much of it went in gambling, mainly at cards and at horse-racing. The fact that he once won a double at the races was remembered years later as if it had been out of keeping with his usual bad luck.

In February 1934 Sugar tried his luck again as a prospector, taking out a mining lease (No 3585) on a strike called 'Homewards' situated about 13 miles southeast of the Curry on the Richmond road. His partner - they had a half share each - was John Humphrey Drury. No fortunes, once again, were made, for we next hear of Sugar, a few months later, officiating at a sports day back in Cloncurry.

Colin Dawes, who would one day bury Sugar, recalled in 1988 that when he, Colin, was 18 years old and took part in the 1934 Labour Day sports, Lawrie was the handicapper for the children's races, some involving bicycles. Sporting activities were ever popular in outback towns, especially the more vigorous ones like Rugby League, go-kart racing, boxing and rodeos.

In 1935, contestants in a Air Race celebrating Melbourne's centenary landed at the Cloncurry aerodrome two miles outside the town. There was always something going on, it seems, and there were always some improvements to be made: the roads were lit by electric street-lights in 1937, and the new Shire Hall, 'the finest in the West', was opened two years later, by which time most of the town's roads had been bitumenised.

In 1938 Lawrie was 50. Then came the Second World War.

According to The Story of Cloncurry, at the first Council meeting after the war began, the Council 'expressed concern at the number of "foreigners", potential fifth columnists, in nearby Mt Isa, and resolved to guard the water reservoir.' They were also worried about the possibility of air-raids. But it was not until March 1942 that an air-raid shelter was built behind the Shire Hall, in Scarr Street.

It was about this time that the Americans arrived. They further enlarged the facilities at the aerodrome, which had been taken over by the RAAF - they extended the runway - and turned the Shire Hall, which they commandeered, into a make-shift hospital. They moved out before long into purpose-built accommodation as a fully-equipped air-base was established. Within a year Flying Fortresses were setting out from Cloncurry to bomb Japanese positions in New Guinea. In 1942, an American pilot spent a few days in Cloncurry after his plane made a forced landing at Winton. His name was Lyndon Baines Johnson, and in November 1963 he would succeed John Kennedy as President of the United States.

Lawrie continued to work on the railways during the war as a guard; and in 1940, when he was 52, he became enamoured of a widow, Amy Rees.

She was 10 years younger than Lawrie, and had been a widow for about five years; her husband had worked for the Post Office as a linesman. For some time now she had been courted by a grazier, Mr Ticehurst of Cabbaroo. One night, about 9.0 pm, Lawrie Honeycombe knocked at her front door: he was on his way to work on a night shift and carried his tucker box with him.

Mrs Rees had a daughter, Gwen, who was then 15, and as surprised as her mother at this visitation so late at night. Nearly 50 years later she recalled what happened next. 'He liked my mother, but was shy, you see, and he must have plucked up his courage to knock at the door. She went to open it, and he said "Hallo" and she said "Hallo" and asked him if he would like to come in. He said he would and she took him into the front room. He sat in a lounge chair with his tucker box at his feet and didn't say another word. He wouldn't speak. They sat like that for fifteen minutes and not a word was spokenl Then he said "I've got to go now.'" Gwen burst out laughing. She had watched the whole scene all those years ago suppressing her giggles. 'At the door he said: "Can I come back another time?" and mother said "If you'd like to." He was lovely.'

The friendship blossomed. Mrs Rees was a laundrywoman for the railways: she did the washing of dining-car linen and of the sheets and pillows from the sleepers. Lawrie sometimes helped her. She never married him, however, or Mr Ticehurst, although it seems that if Lawrie had been free, she

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Sugar's friendship with Amy Rees lasted over 20 years. In 1942 when a kidney illness put him in the Cloncurry Hospital, which was also the Base Hospital for the Flying Doctors Service, she must have been his most frequent visitor. No doubt he behaved himself when she called. But a young nurse, Rose Williams, remembers how anxious he was to place a bet on a horse, perhaps in the Melbourne Cup. The matron was totally opposed to any betting being done in her hospital. But Rose Williams did as Sugar wanted, though she couldn't recall whether or not he won anything.

When the war ended the Americans went home, and the town lapsed into an outback torpor, induced by the lack of business and visitors and the long hot days, and nights. The greatest annual activity was in April, on Anzac Day, when two world wars were now commemorated. In 1947 Gwen Rees married Chick Black, an engine-driver, and a young colleague of Lawrie. He and Amy attended the wedding. Theirs would never take place.

In 1950, Australia went to war again, in South Korea, committed by the newly elected and pro-imperial Liberal Party under Robert Menzies. National Service followed. By the time the war ended, in July 1953, some 250 Australian soldiers had been killed.

In April that year Lawrie Honeycombe retired; he was 65. Everest was conquered in May and in June, in Britain, a Queen was crowned. But no one saw the ceremonies on television in Australia, where regular TV transmissions would not begin for another three years, and then only around Sydney and Melbourne. Radio put the outback in contact with the rest of the nation, but brought it no nearer. To the two thousand people who now lived in the Curry, Sydney was as unimaginable as London, and as far away; most had never seen the sea.

Then something happened that enlivened the whole community and the last years of Lawrie Honeycombe's life. Uranium was found at Mt Isa.

It happened in March 1954 at the Royal George copper mine. Mt Isa Mines, which was now having a bonanza, producing manganese, bismuth, cobalt and limestone in addition to copper, gold, silver, lead and zinc, made every effort to cash in on this latest discovery, as did hundreds of amateurs armed with geiger-counters. Once again, prospectors roamed the spinifex, and before long over 700 claims were registered at the Mining Warden's office in Cloncurry. In July, extensive uranium deposits were found by Clem Walton and Norm McConnachy near Rosebud, an abandoned copper mine some 40 miles west of Cloncurry. The find was named Mary Kathleen, after McConnach/s wife, who had recently died, and was sold for £250,000 to a major Australian company. A British company, Rio Tinto, moved in, a model town was built, and the new open-cut uranium mine began production, with an official opening by the Liberal prime minister, Robert Menzies, in October 1957.

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Back in 1954 Lawrie was among the many who bought geiger-counters and went out looking for another Mary K. He didn't find one, and the fortune he sought, the lucky strike, continued to elude him. Sometimes he took with him a younger man, Harry Charles, then in his thirties and a railway guard. In earlier years, they had gone out together at weekends, looking for gold.

Later that year, in November, a memorial to the Rev John Flynn was erected at Cloncurry Airport, which had recently been dignified with 'international' status. But none of the Super Constellations that Qantas now flew ever landed there.

Though retired from the railways, Sugar continued to augment his pension by doing odd jobs for people around the town. For a few months he worked in the Cloncurry Stores and lived in a room in His Majesty's Hotel, now generally known as Guerin's, after its long-lasting licensee, Annie Guerin. Gwen Black visited him there once when he was sick. It was 'a horrible old room', she said.

After that, he camped out under the house at the back of the jewellers and tobacconist shop in Scarr Street run by a Lebanese immigrant, Joe Bakhash, and paid for his lodging and earned some spending money by cleaning up and helping out. The space under the house, as with other Queensland houses built on stilts, was known as a 'granny flat', where elderly relatives were parked in partially enclosed and somewhat primitive conditions, among discarded household junk.

It seems that Joe Bakhash and Lawrie were old friends. They played cards together, drank together, smoked cigarettes together, and compared the bad new world with the old days of their youth and manhood. A white cockatoo in Joe's house used to comment on another aspect of a failing they shared. It sang: 'Joe the Khash done his cash, done his cash. Sugar Honey done his money.'

So Lawrie aged, a wizening spectator of what took place in the town and at the outdoor sports that the young men continued to enjoy.

Anzac Days came and went: children and ex-servicemen paraded; the Last Post and Reveille were sounded by a bugler at the war memorial; wreaths were laid and the National Anthem sung. In Melbourne, in 1956, the Olympic Games were held, for the first time in the southern hemisphere, and shown on the latest novelty, black-and-white TV. In Sydney, a play, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, was a smash-hit and would be made into an American film. The following year, The Pub with no Beer, sung by Slim Dusty, went to Number One and became Australia's first gold record. In 1959, work started on Stage One of an Opera House in Sydney; Jack Brabham became the first Australian to

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win a motor-racing Grand Prix; Herb Elliott won one of the eight Australian gold medals at the Rome Olympics; and Rod Laver was on his way to becoming the first Australian to win the Grand Slam in tennis. Qantas now encircled the world, and the last tram ran in Sydney.

That was in May 1962. A war had just ended in far-off Algeria, and another war was about to begin somewhat nearer, in Vietnam.

In Cloncurry, Lawrie, now 74, was dying.

In January 1988 I flew in a small Beechcraft plane owned by Flight West Airlines to this hot little town in the middle of nowhere, to the barren airfield that had witnessed the dawning of Australian aviation nearly 70 years ago; and all on a summer's afternoon I met Gwen Black, Harry Charles, Joe Bakhash's son, Joe, Rose Williams, and Colin Dawes; and at the Wagon Wheel Motel found that the licensee, Warren Robinson, had listed all his predecessors in every hotel in the town; he had also collected photographs of every establishment and was in the process of sorting them out. I saw where the soap factory had once stood, and took a photo of the Flying Doctors' memorial; their base had long ago been transferred to Mt Isa and Flynn's monument to the Shire Hall.

It said that F Doyle & Co had arranged the funeral, that Lawrence Sydney Honeycombe had died on 6 June 1962 and was buried the following day. He was described as single, aged 75 years (this was wrong - he was 74), and his late residence was given as Scarr Street. There was a blank opposite Next of Kin.

However, one of his relatives happened to be in Cloncurry and could have filled in the blank. Lawrie's nephew, Bob, was assistant stationmaster in Cloncurry at the time. A week before his 55th birthday Bob attended the funeral of his uncle, whom he had only met about four or five times. The time of the funeral was 4.0 pm, and the grave's number was documented as 2076. The total cost of the funeral, including the coffin, was £61.7.0. The account was sent to Mrs Rees.

She and her daughter, Gwen Black, had put an announcement in the Mt tsa Mail; it appeared on 15 June and read; Thanks. We wish to thank doctors, nursing and domestic staff at the Cloncurry Base Hospital and all those who sent messages of sympathy, in respect of our dear departed friend, Lawrence Sydney Honeycombe.'

'He was a cranky old bastard', said Colin Dawes, adding that Sugar 'wore glasses at the finish, half glasses, and had lost his hair.' He also, said Col, used a Maurel and McKenzie cigarette-holder, made of plastic and briar.

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Col took me out to the back yard and showed me the ancient hearse, a Fiat 110, that had been in use since 1919 and in which Lawrie had lain. 'He was 5 feet 7,' said Col, as if it were yesterday. 'And weighed 11 stone'. Funerals he said, were generally held between 3 and 4 in the afternoon, and as the hearse was driven through the town, shops would shut and men would doff their hats. That's how it had been with Lawrie.

There was nothing to say and nothing to do, except to stick the marker upright in the ground. We returned to the Rolls Royce.

It was almost 100 years since Lawrie's birth in April, 1888. As I sat in the Rolls I thought of the old man in the granny flat, the wooing of Amy Rees, of the haphazard search for uranium and gold, of the cards, the horses, the soap factory and the Royal, of Gwen and Lily, and of the Naughtons and Charters Towers, of the cane-fields of McDesme, and of Lawrie's childhood in Crocodile Creek. But I saw him most strongly in his youth, playing football: winning, not losing, with the sun on his neat and smiling face, and joy in his heart.
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3T I

As Mabel Kettle put it, talking of a time when she was six and Esther was newly widowed (Bill had died of phthisis in March 1911 on a train): 'She was still living at Mt Leyshon, and when he died she used to come into Charters Towers once a week and sell eggs and home-made bread which she baked herself - all for a living , as she had four children to rear. She often used to take me back with her to Mt Leyshon when she had finished delivering her eggs and bread... When she left Mt Leyshon she went to Ayr and opened a little lolly-shop. She did not have much at the time, but she did very well over the years. Her business just grew and grew and grew.'

Esther's daughter, Alma, who was eleven in 1913, explained the move as follows: 'Charters Towers was going downhill - the gold had been worked out. The Burdekin was a new area. People came to Ayr because land was cheaper, and to start a new life. My mother came here because she knew some family called Rutherford; my father worked for them, cane-cutting, before he died.'

Bill had worked on the Rutherfords' cane farm, McDesme, for five months in 1909, sharing a tent with Jack, who may have been Esther's younger brother. Although Bill thought Mrs Rutherford was 'a funny old sort', her kindness and cooking impressed him favourably - as did the coastal plains, interrupted by abrupt small dark forested mountains, through which the Burdekin River ran, and the hamlets of Ayr and Home Hill; the McDesme farm was situated between them. Or perhaps it was the lusher, less arid landscape near the blue-green sea, and the breezier climate - as well as the cheapness of the land.

Bill's grandson, Lloyd said: 'My grandfather, Willie, hoped to get enough money together to establish himself in the Burdekin - and the family; he believed the area would prosper. His ambition was to get a small block of land, near the railway station. He thought of setting up a shop.' According to John, Bill's other grandson: 'When Willie died, Esther could see there wasn't much future in the Charters Towers area for a young family, because the gold was starting to peter out. She had never been to Ayr, as far as I know. But she must have had glowing reports from her husband. So she took her children and came to Ayr. She started a grocery store.'

It wasn't that simple of course, and it wasn't that quick. It was not until March 1913 that Esther, aged 33, made the move to Ayr, making fact of the Utopian dreams her husband had had, and making use of her own common sense. It was what Willie had wanted, and it must have seemed the best thing to do - making a new beginning somewhere else and giving her children the

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chance of a better life near the coast - away from the fatal dust and heat of Charters Towers.