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

John said later: 'I got a phonecall from New Zealand at ten o'clock at night, from Ethel, telling me that Len had had a stroke that day and died. So I got on a plane at six o'clock the next morning from Townsville to Sydney, and I was in New Zealand by about half-past one that afternoon. He was cremated in Tauranga and his ashes were flown back to Townsville. Len and Ethel had very good friends in Tauranga and would stay at the same motel every year. They'd

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go over in November and make the motel their base. They'd stay until about February, through our very hot months... They had other friends in Hamilton. Len would go to the local Rotary Club arnKhe local Anglican church.' Alma said: 'John made all the arrangements. We couldn't afford to bring Len back - it was very expensive in those days. We didn't have any ready money, nor did Ethel. It was all in property.'

Ethel continued to visit New Zealand annually after Len's death, and often went far overseas. With a friend she went on organised tours of Europe, to the Holy Land, to Greece, to the West Indies and America. She was away from Queensland for four or five months every year. She could afford it, as in 1975 she sold her share in the family business to John for half a million dollars. Alma had already given John her quarter share, while retaining her house and receiving an allowance. Honeycombes was now entirely his.

John himself would become a great traveller over the years, flying around the world on business trips, usually accompanied by members of his family. His first trip out of Queensland had been to Sydney in 1954, soon after his grandmother Esther died.

He first went overseas in March 1958, when he was 21, sailing second-class from Brisbane on an Italian ship, the Roma, with an Italian friend, Peter Mattiuzzo, whose people had a small farm northeast of Venice. After a month in Italy, John teamed up with Alma, who had flown to Rome. In a hired car they drove across Europe to London and then, much as Len had done in 1930, they drove around Britain, visiting Ayr and Edinburgh among other places, and returning to Australia (as Esther had done) on a boat that sailed from Marseilles. In Cornwall they got as far as Mevagissey, Polperro and Looe.

As with Len, they were unaware of their Cornish origins and of Honeycombe House - although John had been given some clues to both, when he telephoned, out of curiosity, the only Honeycombe he found in the London directory.

This was Fred Honeycombe, who lived in north London, at Willesden, and whose wife had died in a car accident the previous year. Fred, aged 52, told John about some vague inheritance that had never been claimed; he associated it with Cornwall, whence his family had originated and where there was some lost estate. Some years ago, in Ayr, Len had shown John an English magazine which contained an item about the sale of the Honeycombe Estate. Now John was agog - was there any such thing? But although he drove around Cornwall, he didn't know where to look.

All that would change a few years later when I, then an out-of-work actor, wrote in 1964 to most of the Honeycombes I found named in international telephone directories. Some responded, and one of them was John. We were both 27 then.

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He went on to outline what he knew of his forebears, and it is interesting to note how after a few generations names and facts can become confused. He wrote: 'My father's name was William John. However his father and his father's father (my great-grandfather) were both John William. The original John William is said to have come from Bristol, with two Brothers, one by name of Robert I fancy. They went to Melbourne first. One ended up going to South Africa. (I think he was a Doctor), the other went East to America. John William was a mining engineer and said to have been a Cambridge graduate. He came to North Queensland, taking up a position at Charters Towers, which was booming as a gold-mining town. Was there my grandfather, another William John, was born. Apparently JW senior wasn't the perfect father, did not give my grandfather much in the way of education and from tales told was an errant husband.'

In his next letter, having conferred with Alma, John made some emendations to the above. He wrote in August: ' My aunt who was Alma Honeycombe and has always treated me as a son says that her grandfather's name was John Honeycombe... This is the one I thought had been to Cambridge, but that is incorrect my aunt informs me. It was her mother's father who went there... (John) married an Irish girl by the name of Mary Casey and I think he died in Western Australia.' John went on to mention Bob Honeycombe in Charters Towers - 'I think he knows a fair bit of the family history.'

Now John knows it all.

In his first letter to me he said: 'My wife, Beth, is expecting a baby in July. We are anxiously looking forward to this happy event.' In August he wrote, having sent me a photograph: 'As you will see, Beth and I have recently become proud parents. Beth is still in Hospital. I expect her home next week.'

That baby, the first of the next generation, was christened David John; he was born on 29 July 1964 in Ayr.

John had met Beth (Elizabeth Nancy Ford) in September 1959; he was just 23 and she 19. Like Len, John married a girl who sang in a choir and was the daughter of a Shire Council official. Like some other Honeycombe wives, John's wife was an inch taller than he. He told me how their meeting occurred.

'Queensland was celebrating its centenary as a state - up to 1859 it had been a penal colony - and the Queensland Government asked Princess Alexandra to visit the festivities as an official guest. And they asked the Rotary Club in each town to select a young man and woman to represent each shire, to go as a guest of the State, and of the Rotarians in Brisbane, to the centenary celebrations, which included a ball and a garden party. I knew of Beth, but I'd never met her, never seen her. Beth's father was very well known, as he'd been Shire chairman for quite a long time (in fact from 1952 to 1970)... She was the

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only daughter, had two brothers. Well, we were the two selected to go to Brisbane. We rang each other and tried to meet beforehand, but it didn't work out, as I had to attend a six-week course in Melbourne with International Harvester before the event. I flew to Brisbane from Melbourne. It was Len's idea that I do the course, a training course for new employees held at a motortruck and tractor factory and at the head office. I took Beth to a garden party at the old Government House. Princess Alexandra was there, and it was quite a grand affair, with a military band, flags flying, and cups of tea. We went to the official ball together and to various functions and displays.1 One was the Gundoo Festival Youth Rally held at the Exhibition Grounds on Sunday, 6 September, at 3.0pm. Six years later they named their first real home Gundoo.

'First of all we lived in a flat in Drysdale Street in Ayr. Alma had two flats there and she sold them to me on a very low deposit and with easy payments; we lived in one and rented the other. Then we bought a house in Wilmington Street and lived there for a year and a half. Then this house came on the market. I'd had the offer of it a few years back when it was just a piece of ground in Burke Street near the railway line; it was going for £750. But I couldn't afford it. A Dutch couple bought the land and built a house. It wasn't completed when they sold it to us. It was just a shell of a house, no cupboards or carpets. When we moved in David was one year old. We added to the house and much later had it enlarged. We've lived here ever since.'

They had two more sons: Peter, born in October 1966; and Robert, born in September 1969.

A year after Len Honeycombe died and when the machinery business and financial matters had stabilised, John flew to Europe for a month's holiday with Beth, Alma and Rene. They were in London in April 1974. So was Bob Honeycombe of Charters Towers, whom I had met for the first time on 8 March that year; having retired from the railways he was on a world tour.

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On Monday 29 April, ten years after he first wrote to me, John and I met.

I noted in my diary: 'Taxi to Regent Centre Hotel where meet up with the Australian tribe - John + Beth, aunts Alma and Rene, pronounced Reen, and Bob. All very pleasant. The aunts very small, with glasses, and soft accents I have difficulty understanding. I take them to Greek-Cypriot restaurant... Perhaps too greasy or spicy for the Aussies, but they were very game. John has much darker hair than I'd thought, and brown eyes - Spanish colouring with English features. All went well, and then I went to ITN.'

I saw John and Beth again on 24 May. We had lunch in the Queens, an Edwardian pub and my local, together with Adam Acworth and his girlfriend, Sam. My third book, called Adam's Tale - about Adam's experiences as a Detective Constable with the Drug Squad at New Scotland Yard and his subsequent trial at the Old Bailey accused of perjury and conspiracy (he was acquitted) - was published in September. John, who thought that Adam seemed like 'a very good bloke', would help to get him a job in Queensland; and later on, in Toowoomba, David became good friends with Adam and Sam.

It was during this visit that John and Beth for the first time saw Honeycombe House and some of the places associated with his, and my, ancestors. Ten years later, in September 1984, we would gather there, with over 150 Honeycombes from all over the world, for the Honeycombe Heritage Weekend.

In 1974, on his return to Ayr, John set in motion the development programme that would make Honeycombes into one of the most successful business entreprises in the Burdekin today.

Honeycombes Haulage Pty Ltd was formed, with a fleet of 16 trucks and trailers which took the total amount of cane cut at up-river farms at Millaroo and Dalbeg down to the railhead at Claredale. Honeycombes also opened a real estate agency in Ayr, and began building homes with a Logan unit franchise in 1977. A real estate office was opened in Townsville (also building Logan units) in 1979.

All aspects of the Honeycombe business, in real estate, home building, land sales, property management, farm machinery, trucks, new and used cars,

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have since expanded further in Townsville and Ayr and employ over 200 people; and in addition to the cane farms, and the original allotment that Esther bought in 1913, John's companies and he himself own shares in other businesses and several flats and houses - as do his sons. Peter and Robert both work for Honeycombes in the real estate office in Townsville's Charters Towers Rd. David is a Qantas pilot, and now flies 747s, taking 22 hours to fly to London - a journey that took William Honeycombe 160 days.

What happened to the older generation of Honeycombes in Ayr?

Alma died in Ayr in September 1983; she was 81. Bill Honeycombe, John's father, died two months later.

He and Gwen had left Katoomba when he was smitten with Parkinson's disease and had settled on the Gold Coast, at Tweed Heads, NSW. For 12 years she cared for him as his health deteriorated and until he went into a nursing-home. He aged prematurely; he could hardly talk; he was skin and bone; his mind had gone. Lloyd went to see him and was horrified. He said: 'If he was a dog, you'd shoot him.'

Bill died of broncho-pneumonia in a hospital on 30 November 1983 at the age of 79. Gwen still lives in Tweed Heads, stricken with arthritis, but she doesn't care to remember the past.

Zoe left Ayr eventually and settled in Torquay. She went south initially to be near her second son Lloyd. Her later years, those of her independence and domicile in Torquay, were fairly happy ones. She played cards frequently, and she had a car that John had given her, a new Mazda sedan, automatic. He also paid for three trips she made to Europe and for the airfares to Singapore, when she visited Lloyd and his family. But when she died in April 1992 she left her house to Lloyd and nothing to John.

Lloyd had done very well on his own account - unable to fit in with the way things were run in Ayr, with Len and then John in charge.

After going to Ayr High School when he was 12, he went on, in 1958, to board at Townsville Grammar School for the next four years. The school was mainly a day-school (it had about 100 boarders) and the headmaster was Mr Blank.

'Basically I had the choice of boarding-school or reform school', said Lloyd. 'The boys I knew in Ayr were a fairly tough lot, as country boys are. We used to get into a bit of trouble with the police... Up until I went to Townsville GS I concentrated more on sport than on my studies. But once at boarding-school I did reasonably well academically, picked up a few As and Bs, although I still played sports. I got Colours for swimming, football, cross-country, rugby. I was Captain of the rugby team and became Head Prefect in my final year.' He was also Cadet Under-Officer and won a special prize in mathematics.

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Towards the end of 1961 and of his fourth year at the Grammar School, Lloyd, along with some of his mates, applied for entry to the Military Academy at Duntroon. He was selected, but he didn't go.

He said later: 'Len talked me out of it. He said: "Anyone can be a soldier. Why don't you be an engineer and come back to the family business? We need an engineer." John was not so good at the mechanical side of things... Dad was in Townsville then. He and Len spoke to me, and it was all set up that I was going to work for International Harvester in the daytime and study engineering at night. So Dad gave me £25 and Len gave me £25 and an airline ticket, and I went off to Victoria in January 1962... IH had booked me into a hotel where the cost was more than I was earning, about £7 a week. I enrolled in a Technical School and found it would take me 13 years to get a diploma, not three. So I wrote off to Len, and Dad, and I said: "Look, this is not on. I'll be here for a lifetime. I don't think it's what you intended or what I planned to do anyway. Is it possible for you to pay my board and I'll go to Tech School fulltime?" They agreed... I applied for and got a Ford scholarship, which gave me £150 per annum. My education was free. In three years I picked up a diploma - it normally took four years - and became president of the student's council among other things. And I came second in the State in mechanical engineering... Then I went to IH, worked there for all of 65 and half of 66. Most of the time I worked on a project developing a cane harvester with another engineer and four fitters. We designed, built and tested it. I was in Geelong for six months, then another six in North Queensland testing the machinery, then back to Geelong.'

Lloyd was unaware of the importance of Geelong in the early history of the Honeycombes (and the Mountjoys) in Australia. But it also had an influence on his life. For at the Institute of Technology in Geelong he became friendly with an electrical engineer, Terry Flowers; they used to go down to the Flowers' shack at Cape Otway at weekends, fishing, and shooting rabbits. The Flowers, who came from Castlemaine, were now living in Colac west of Geelong; the father was a cabinetmaker. Terry had a younger sister, Chris, who was a nurse in Colac. She and Lloyd became engaged in January 1966.

Later that year Len persuaded Lloyd to return to Ayr and was backed up by Alma, who was concerned about Len's mental state. Lloyd said: 'I was supposed to run the service side of the business, all the garages, fitters, turners and mechanics, and John would look after sales, and Len the cane farms. At the end of the year, when I married Chris, I'd be made a partner. Len also said: "We'll get you a house." So I resigned from IH and went back to Ayr in July. Within two weeks all that stuff about a house fizzled out. It was going to cost him about $800 - which I didn't have - and now he couldn't afford it.'

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'Len rang up the night before I got married', said Lloyd. 'He said: "We need you back up here. Please hurry back as soon as you're married. We've got everything lined up, and we'll have a nice flat for you." So straight after we married - we spent three days in Victoria and three getting up to Queensland -we were back in Ayr, only to find that Len was in bed with a fit of depression, and nothing had been organised at all. So we went and lived in the beach chalet down at Alva beach.'

Lloyd lasted in Ayr for a year. Overworked as an expert mechanic, he resented playing second fiddle to John and having his ideas for improvement ignored. They were too used to being bosses', he said. 'There were two sets of rules, one for John and one for me. I was getting the raw end of the stick. I was pushed out, and decided to get a job somewhere else... In January 1968 we left Ayr and moved to Melbourne. I got a job as a Class 1 naval architect, engineer, with the Department of Defence in Williamstown.'

Nine months after Lloyd and Chris left Ayr their first son, Andrew, was born, in September 1968.

They had two other children: Paul, born in May 1971; and Alison, born in 1973 - two weeks after Len died in New Zealand.

But there was then no teaming up with John, for Lloyd's career was flourishing and he loved his job and naval types. In 1972 he had applied to join the Navy, but a motorbike accident damaged his right ankle permanently (in cold weather it used to seize up) and his schoolboy ambition of being in the armed services was never realised - although it would be by both his sons.

Early in 1974 he was sent on a two-year practical experience course to the UK, and worked in virtually every naval and civil shipyard in England and Scotland, learning their techniques. His family went with him. He was back in Williamstown at the end of 1975. Then in 1977, aged 33, he became superintendent naval architect in charge of about 900 people, responsible for the design of the superstructures of warships and for outfitting and modernising them. Ships that Lloyd worked on in this ten-year period included the destroyers HMAS Swan, Vampire and Vendetta, and the oceanographic research vessel HMAS Flinders. He used to go on sea trials but was sea-sick.

Increasingly impatient with managerial incompetence and weakness, Lloyd resigned in 1978 and joined Australian Reinforced Concrete (ARC). He became works manager; the company produced 90,000 tons of steei products a year. For several years he was ARC'S marketing manager in Singapore, living with his family in a house that had been occupied by senior British officers before and after the war. But eventually he returned to Melbourne and to Williamstown and to his former naval job. Lloyd was also neared his ailing mother, Zoe, who had left Ayr and was living in Torquay. He accordingly saw much more of her than John, and periodically he visited Bill and Gwen, keeping in touch with Gwen and her daughter Pam after Bill's death in 1983.

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Bill's funeral was attended by John and Lloyd, and both sons were also at the funeral of their mother, Zoe, in Melbourne in April 1992.

Arthur Honeycombe, who was born in September 1923 and was the only son of Dick and Addie Honeycombe of Footscray, also served with the RAAF during the Second World War, as Bill had done.

After leaving school at the age of 14, Arthur went to the Footscray Technical College before joining his father at Mitchells, farm machinery manufacturers, where he worked as a fitter and turner for 42 years. In 1941, when he reached 18, he joined the RAAF. There was no conscription, and as he was in a protected industry he could be exempt. He signed on voluntarily and unencouraged by mates, though several of his friends then followed his lead. His mother was extremely upset and strongly opposed his action: she thought he was sure to be killed. But Arthur, trained as an engineer, never left Australia. Having done his basic training at Shepperton, he moved to Laverton and then to Gorrie, 200 miles south east of Darwin. He was in Darwin a few months after the Japanese attacked and bombed the town, and helped to repair wrecked and damaged aircraft. After a second posting to Laverton, he left the RAAF in November 1945.

On 7 September 1946 he married Laurel Winifred Ellwood in Sydney, at the Manly Methodist Church. The young couple lived with Arthur's parents (and Auntie Louie) at 28 Coral Avenue for three years, before moving around the corner to Govan Street, Footscray - just before Thelma, Arthur's younger sister, married Bill Clemence in November 1949. Bill had been a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese and had slaved on the building of the infamous railway line in Thailand between Bangkok and Burma. His story is told in the section Afterwords that follows this chapter.