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

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Having failed with John Deere, Len had his doubts about this. Ethel said later: 'He was diffident about accepting their offer;.he said: "I don't know machinery - I'm not a mechanic." The IH manager for Queensland told him: "Mr Honeycombe, if you can manage one business, you can manage another." And that gave him the confidence to accept the offer. They (IH) were a splendid help all through the years - we never looked back.'

It was at this propititious time, on 20 August 1936, that a son was born to Zoe and Bill in the hospital in Ayr. Bill's occupation in the birth certificate is given as 'grocer1. In view of the fact that Rene had distanced herself from the family, that Alma and Lloyd were childless, and that Len and Ethel would also produce no children, the baby boy soon became the focus for Len's and Alma's and Esther's aspirations for the future. He was christened John Harold: John being the second forename of his father and grandfather and the first of his greatgrandfather, the first Honeycombe to come to Queensland; Harold was the name of his mother's favourite brother.

But despite the birth of a son and heir, Bill was not too happy at his Munro Street home. Alma said later: 'He didn't want any children; he didn't want John, and he didn't want Lloyd, his second son. The Second World War gave him the chance to get away from Zoe, and from Ayr. He didn't want her either. So he cleared off and left everybody, all. of us, and enlisted in the Dental Corps; they were short of dentists, and he had trained as a dental mechanic. He never went overseas; he served mainly in Brisbane and Melbourne, as a Sergeant in the RAAF.'

War was declared in September 1939. Len joined the local militia. As he was in his thirties and the prime manager of a family business he was not pressured to enlist. The eldest son, Bill had satisfied any obligations there. Len's obligations lay elsewhere. It was also time, in the uncertainties of war, to secure a wife and a home of his own.

He married Ethel Keller in the Home Hill Anglican Church on 1 January, 1940, a Saturday afternoon; he was 33 and she was 29.

Asked why they chose New Year's Day, Ethel said: 'It was a new leaf, a new start, and it was holiday time. Our relations could come from Ravenswood and Townsville and so forth. But the Burdekin River had flooded the low-level bridge, and Len and others had to get a rail-motor to go across. They couldn't go by car... The reception was at the School of Arts: there "were speeches and dancing. Afterwards, we drove to Townsville - Len had a small Austin - and stayed there overnight. Then we went over to Magnetic Island, to Arcadia. We had intended to drive up north, but it rained so much we couldn't go. So we came back to Home Hill. Len was a bit sick when we got back, and he was lying on the bed, not feeling so good, and Rene's little girl, who'd be about four, said: "I think Uncle Len's had too much wedding".'

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So he bought the farm, which was managed by a tenant farmer. It was a farseeing action, as cane farms would prosper in future years, while family businesses were supplanted by chain stores and supermarkets. In 1954 he would buy the adjoining cane farm for £9,000, and own 285 acres in all. By that time he also owned 15 acres of land in Rossiter's Hill, where he and Ethel lived, and rented 103 acres of land near Home Hill and the Burdekin River from the Drysdale Estate, at an annual rent of £181.10.0. This was Kastners Farm on the Klondyke Road. It was leased, in Mrs IME Honeycombe's name in April 1944, and the lease was renewed the following year. The farm was fairly dilapidated and run down: the house, and all the animals, machinery, etc, were bought for £2,497.10.0. When the lease ran out, it was renewed from Mr JW Board in July 1954 for £9,500. The freehold was bought by Len from Pioneer Sugar Mills in March 1967 for over £14,000 (£6,000 for the sugarcane crop). It consisted of 154 acres then.

After the war, realising that the proposed new bridge across the Burdekin River would see an increase in traffic, Len bought a piece of land at Home Hill in November 1946 for £185. A branch of the farm machinery business was set up there. The land was sold in 1965 for £15,000, and the machinery shop was sold in 1971 to Len Ashworth, who when a teenager had travelled to Europe with the Honeycombes. He converted the building into a souvenir shop, selling rocks and gems.

Back in 1940, after their marriage, Len and Ethel lived for the next few years in Ayr, in a flat in Drysdale Street, which intersected Munro Street where the rest of the Honeycombes lived. Next they lived in a house around the corner in Railway Street.

Then Len bought the land at Rossiter's Hill, for £240, part of which had once been the cricket pitch at Rossiter's Hill, a low rise in the ground just south of Ayr. Their house was relocated and moved on a truck to its new site; it was erected over a long weekend.

Said Ethel: 'The reason why we shifted was that Len wanted to expand the shop and he also wanted to run some horses, so we needed more land. We used to come out to Rossiter's - they owned all the land there - and he'd ask if they'd sell him some. He kept calling on them Sunday by Sunday, and eventually the mother said: "Oh, why don't you let Lennie have some land?" They always called him Lennie from when he was a boy in the grocery days. And eventually he got what he wanted. Of course / didn't want to go out there, into the bush. There weren't any other houses about and no electric light. There was only the bus - no car for me - and I didn't like it at all, for a long time.

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But we planted some palms, and other things - there were no trees to clear - and the bedroom and kitchen were eventually extended. And Len had his racehorses, brood mares. He used to send them over to New Zealand to be mated, or served... Later, when Len wanted to shift back into town, when he wasn't so well - we thought we'd build a block of flats opposite the church, live on top and rent underneath -1 said: "Oh look - let's stay put." And we did.'

'The war years were very difficult,' continued Ethel. 'All the senior staff we employed went off to be trained, and all we had left were boys, delivering groceries door to door. They'd just built that new building - and it had to be paid off. They worked long hours - Alma and Lloyd, Esther and Len. They used to stay open until eleven o'clock at night. It was all hands on deck.'

A teenage girl called Clarice Richards was employed by Len Honeycombe to assist Alma in the office. In 1989 she wrote to John Honeycombe about some of her remembrances of those days.

'I remember the times during the war when things like chocolates, biscuits and tinned fruit were virtually unobtainable... I remember the tedious job of having to count coupons for butter, sugar and tea (collected from customers) and laboriously pasting them onto printed forms supplied by the government, and these had to be handed in with the store's order to Burns Philp (the main wholesaler supplying Honeycombes) before replacement stocks could be obtained. I remember the introduction of the 40-hour-week, and we thought how wonderful it was to finish work at 20 to 5 in the afternoon, until the powers-that-be decided that this was too early to go home. So commencing time was adjusted so that the shops then closed at 10 past 5. I remember all the fun we had with your uncle, Lloyd Wilson - one of the funniest men I have ever met, with his endless supply of yarns. As a very naive 15-year-old I don't think I fully understood the meaning in a lot of his jokes at first... I remember when you, John, were just a kid in short pants, and you used to annoy the life out of us office girls when you wanted to try your skill at typing a letter on the office typewriter - a vintage model Remington... There was something special about the atmosphere in a grocery store at Xmas time - a very busy time, with customers calling to purchase all the Xmas "goodies". Items such as hams were available only on special occasions such as Xmas and Easter, and the hams were always raw. You could not buy a cooked ham as you can today... All the shops stayed open until 9.0pm on Xmas Eve.'

John Kerr, in Black Snow and Liquid Gold, described what further effects the Second World War had on Ayr.

'At the outbreak of war, guards were immediately appointed to such vital installations as the powerhouse, at heavy cost to the ratepayer. They were unarmed, of little practical value, and were soon removed. The Air Raid Precaution organisation was rapidly established, although the front line was half a world away. Its members were issued with helmets, badges and armbands...

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Children were taught the drills and volunteer fire brigades were established in Home Hill and Ayr. This gave a much needed degree of preparedness when Japan entered the war. Each town had an air-raid siren... Local branches of the Red Cross and the Queensland Sock and Comforts Fund were formed to resume the work that had ended only 21 years before. Women's commitment was substantial, most clearly in the Comforts Fund and the Women's Land Army in cotton and vegetable picking... Public presentations were held to farewell the volunteers, (and) voluntary levies, carnivals and functions were held to aid patriotic funds... Council supported those at the front with a remission of rates for the duration of the war... Local volunteers for the front line went to training camp at Miowera, south of Bowen. With no end to war in sight, registration for military training was extended to all young men from the start of 1941. Local members of the Militia and National trainees went south, with Lt TA Campbell in charge, for a three-month training course in Home Defence.'

Kerr continues: 'The war was painful for many Italians, who had migrated to North Queensland. (Some) were treated shamefully and interned... Local police advised Italians not to congregate publicly, especially not to talk Italian... After Japan bombed Pearl Harbour in December 1941, and Asian colonies fell (Singapore surrendered in February 1942 and Darwin was bombed), Australians suddenly sensed the imminent threat. Within days the Mobile Recruiting Rally was enrolling volunteers in Home Hill... Ayr police station was supplied with a powerful electric siren to blast out the air-raid warnings. Local businesses had to protect shop windows to prevent slivers of glass flying about... Constructing air- raid shelters was given top priority. Schools were closed until zig-zag trenches were dug in the grounds... Separate trenches were dug for boys and girls... Blackouts were imposed from sunset to sunrise, so as not to provide targets for enemy bombers. Radio stations went off the air at 6.30pm. Although regulations permitted shrouded lights, Ayr street lights were turned off completely... There were few people shopping, and even necessities were scarce. Houses were empty as civilians evacuated voluntarily, and many businesses closed.'

Petrol was rationed, and then meat (in September 1943). Home deliveries by motor vehicle were curtailed and trucks impounded for military use. Grocers were compelled to stockpile foodstuffs in case of an emergency - tins of fruit, condensed milk, jam, etc and bags of sugar, salt and soap. More shortages were caused and prices soared when supplies were diverted to feed the influx of troops.

While women and children fled south for safety in 1942 - Esther and Ethel were among them and would be away from Ayr for over a year - thousands of troops, Australian and American, were passing northwards through the Burdekin, although few were actually stationed in the shire. Some were based at a prisoner-of-war camp south of the Burdekin River and opposite Clare, where Italian prisoners, brought all the way from Europe, were immured. Some

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American servicemen came to Ayr by truck from Woodstock aerodrome for rest and recreation at Nelson's Lagoon and Alva Beach. In July 1942, a Japanese flying-boat dropped the only bombs that fell on Queensland during the war; they fell on Townsville. But no one was hurt and little damage was done.

Zoe Honeycombe had gone south to Brisbane in 1940, before the evacuation of women and children from the Burdekin began. She went there to be near her husband and she took John, aged four, with her. For reasons that are not too clear - except that she was pregnant - she returned to Ayr early in 1944 and left John there (now aged seven) to be cared for by his grandmother and Alma for the next two years. Zoe then travelled down to her mother in Rockhampton, where on 21 February 1944 she gave birth to another baby boy, who was christened Lloyd William (after his uncle, Lloyd Wilson, and his father). Zoe was 38 when Lloyd was born.

She was more fond of her second son than of John, whom she is said to have treated none too well, scolding and slapping him. For John was favoured by the Honeycombes, by Esther and Alma and Len, with whom Zoe was not in sympathy. Alma said later: 'She took a dislike to all the Honeycombes, on account of Bill and her being unhappy. She said: "I'll bring up Lloyd my way." But she didn't have any idea of bringing up children - Lloyd was spoiled; he grew up like a weed... She was quite a gooa living woman, but a bit religious, a bit odd.1

Zoe's aversion to the Honeycombes did not, however, intensify until after the war. Nor did Bill's to her. He was still tied to her, and supported her and their two sons quite adequately: he had a quarter interest in the business and his RAAF pay. But while he was stationed in Melbourne he met a much younger women who would one day be his second wife.

She was Gwen Copeland, who was 18 years younger than Bill. When they met, in 1942, she was 20 and he was 38. Gwen was in the WAAF, a stenographer, and a sergeant like Bill. According to her they met in the Sergeants Mess of an RAAF base near Melbourne after she had had a dental check-up. They were both living on the RAAF base at the time. It seems they started going out together, despite the fact that he was a married man.

Gwen's father, who had worked on the railways and served in the First World War, died in 1924 when she was two. Her mother had remarried a steamroller driver, Edwin Thomas Madden, who also had a young daughter, Mary, from a previous marriage. They lived in Lawson, about 15 miles east of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. Gwen was educated at the primary school there and then at a high school in Hazelbrook, a few miles further east. She was employed in an office in Sydney when war was declared.

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Her maiden name, Copeland, is the same as that of the Helen Copeland who married Lawrence Harward Mountjoy at Torrumbarry in July 1883; she was born in Ireland and her father was a surveyor. It is quite possible, though not proved, that she and Gwen Copeland were related.

Meanwhile, the nearness of the Japanese and the chance of invasion diminished when the battle for Papua and New Guinea came to a bloody end by December 1943. More than 6,000 Australians had died in combat there, over 2,000 of them in the fighting along the Kokoda Trail. American forces then made major advances in the Pacific, closing in on Japan. But although Germany surrendered to the Allies in Europe in May 1945, it was not until 15 August - after atom bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - that the Labour Prime Minister Ben Chifley, who had taken over from John Curtin after his death in July, announced the surrender of Japan.

The war was over. People gathered in the streets of Ayr to celebrate, and all work stopped. An open-air service for all religious denominations was held -34 of Ayr's sons died in the war - and the following day became a holiday, with sporting events and a children's picnic. Empty shops and homes were opened up and reoccupied, but it was three years before all the air-raid shelters in the area were demolished. Recovery in economic terms, however, was slow, and tobacco remained in short supply for many years. The major event of postwar reconstruction was the high-level road and rail bridge across the Burdekin River connecting Home Hill and Ayr. The low-level bridge had been wrecked by floodwaters in 1917, 1925, 1940 and washed away, with a train, in March 1945. Work began on the new bridge in April 1947, and it was fully operational within ten years.

After the war, late in 1945, both Bill and Zoe returned to Ayr, living together for the last time with their sons; John was nine and Lloyd was nearly two. Bill had said goodbye to Gwen, most reluctantly it seems. Perhaps she saw no future in her association with the much older man. Perhaps she was looking for, or had found, a man of her own age.

Little John was now working in the store, as Alma and Len had done when they were children, after school and at weekends; the store stayed open in the evenings until 8.30pm. He used to cut the butter, which came in boxes, into one pound and half-pound slabs; most items were bought in bulk and packaged on the premises. He weighed sugar and potatoes and was entrusted with bottling methylated spirits and kerosene. Alma taught him about costing and doing accounts, and he was paid about two shillings a week. He learned how a business was run and about values of every sort. There wasn't much time for other activities, and school homework must also been done. But he went swimming and fishing and learned how to play the piano, being taught locally by a female music teacher over a period of five years.

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Len was 40 in October 1946. Speaking of him in the postwar years Ethel said; 'He had a busy life. All the hours of the day were meant to be used, and after a wash and a meal at home he used to often go back to work at night. Or he'd go and see a farmer about something. Or there'd be a Chamber of Commerce meeting. And he was on the church council - he was a warden for 25 years. He was very active fund-raising. He enjoyed it all though.'

Of Ethel herself, her nephew John said: 'She didn't have any labour-saving devices in the house. Washing would take one morning a week and ironing an afternoon. And although they didn't have any children there was always the cooking to do: she did her own baking, made damper and her own jam every year, rosella jam. And there was a lot of work being done for the churches. She was always very actively involved in the church: her mother was the same. She sang in church choirs when she was young, and in The Messiah every year at Christmas, at the Masonic Hall. In the evening she played cards. Or Len would have some business people around. It was much more usual then to entertain at home in a town this size... Ethel was a serene sort of person, very kind, with a sense of humour and good common sense. She had little to do with the business. Nor did Zoe, who never played any part in it at all.'

Down south, Gwen Copeland had married Norman Eldridge Jarvis. He, apparently, had also been in the RAAF during the war and was also a sergeant. It seems that he was acquainted with both Bill and Gwen and may have been a friend of both. He may in fact have worked with Bill. When Bill returned to his wife in Ayr after the war, the way was clear for Norman, who was three years older than Gwen. He married her in Sydney sometime in 1946. Their first child, Pamela Kaye Jarvis, was born on 14 February 1947 at Corryong, on the northeastern Victorian border with New South Wales. Norman was working on the family firm at Cudgewa, alongside his father, Reuben Jarvis, his brother Kenneth, and his sister Melva. Called 'Fairyvale', the farm was in mountainous country west of the upper reaches of the Murray River and about 50km northwest of Mt Kosciusko and the Snowy River.

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Bill is said to have made more than one trip down south to see Gwen and Norman, presumably staying with them at 'Fain/vale'. Perhaps he attended their wedding in Sydney. Perhaps he travelled down to Victoria again after Pam Jarvis was born.

The marriage of Bill and Zoe finally fell apart in 1949, after surviving, uneasily, for 19 years. The collapse was precipitated by the accidental death of Norman Jarvis at Cudgewa in August 1949. Five months earlier, Gwen had suffered another loss when her second child, a baby boy called Stephen, died a few hours after he was born in Corryong District Hospital on 4 March; the cause of death was 'massive collapse of lung'. It is possible that Bill Honeycombe was in New South Wales or Victoria at the time, because after taking both his sons to their new schools in February that year, he drove south. More than likely, however, he merely left the Burdekin to take up a new job, perhaps in Brisbane or in another Queensland town. Then Norman was killed; he was 29.

He said: 'I am a farmer residing at'Fairyvale', Cudgewa. About 11.0am on 24 August 1949 I went with my brother (the late Norman Eidridge Jarvis) to a paddock about 600 yards from my home at Cudgewa to get a load of firewood. Norman was driving the spring cart and driving a young mare that had been recently broken in. I was seated beside him in the spring cart. After loading the wood we left for home. As we had to pass through another paddock Norman stopped the horse and I got down to remove the sliprails. After the sliprails were taken down Norman drove the horse and cart through. Norman attempted to stop after passing through the opening to pick me up and give me a ride home. The mare could not be checked and commenced to trot and then gallop down the slope. The paddock had furrows across, which made the spring cart very rough to ride on. After going about 50 yards Norman was shaken off the load of wood and slipped onto the mare's back, and from there he fell in front of the near-side wheel, which passed over his back, just above the small of his back. I ran to where Norman was lying and he said: "Ken -1 think my back is broken." He did not speak again. I sang out to my sister Melva to call the doctor. Norman appeared to become unconscious after he told me his back was broken. I released his belt, and collar, and took off his boots and raised his head slightly. Dr Larkins of Corryong arrived about ten minutes later, but he could not pick up any heartbeat.'