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Did William ride out with a dray to collect his son's family and their baggage? Possibly he did,
and to help them financially. For immigrants, as we have seen, were unprepared for the soaring
costs of transport and commodities occasioned by the gold-rush.
It was the start of the Australian spring: the weather was mild; flowers bloomed; the grass was
green. Three years had passed since William had emigrated and six since Richard's marriage in
Gretna Green. In the interim William may never have seen his son, whose itinerant work had
taken him to the north of England and to Scotland. He may never have met Richard's wife, nor
As if to mark this family reunion, a significant and grand event took piace in Geeiong a fortnight
or so after Richard's family arrived.
The colony's Governor, Charles La Trobe, came to Geelong, and set his seal on the town's
importance and ail the progress being made by laying the foundation stone of the Geelong
Railway Station on 20 September 1853. At the same time the first turf was cut in the ground for
a railway line to Melbourne.
An open-air banquet, free to all, followed the ceremony. Thousands joined in the celebrations.
Among them, marvelling at the crowds, banners and flags, the bands, the food and drink, were
surely the two Honeycombe families, all 10 of them, their West Country accents mixing with the
other English, Scottish, Irish dialects and voices all around them. It was all very odd. For this
was Australia. But among such a polyglot crowd, unfettered and gainsome, they must have feit
almost at home.
Two years after Richard and his family left Liverpool, his fourth child, Emma, was born, on 16
May 1855. She was the first Honeycombe to be born in Australia. Her mother, Elizabeth,
registered the birth, giving her address as
'South Geelong', and her husband's occupation as 'mason'. Emma never married, and died in
Melbourne in 1876 at the age of 21.
Emma was not one year old when her aunt, Jane Honeycombe, Richard's older sister and the
last of William's family to emigrate, left England on her own.
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ssen any of his three grand-children. He had certainly never seen his grandson, George.
The reunion must have been charged with some emotion and there would have been much to
talk about.
How was the voyage and how was England? How were Mary Ann and Jane? What had
happened to William Robert? Was Jane planning to venture here? And what was this war
between Russia and Turkey? And the Duke of Wellington was dead, and another Napoleon
was Emperor of France! And the Crystal Palace was being rebuilt in south London! How was it
all back home?
How was it here? Richard would ask. What was it like?
He would have looked about and gone on looking and asking about jobs and prices, about
Geelong, Melbourne and Victoria. And so this was Henry! Martha and John! How they had
changed! And where was his stepmother, whom his father had married in September 1851?
Gone to Tasmania! And his own mother - how had she died? And little Elizabeth had got
married! Without even going to Gretna Green!
We know that Richard and his family were living in South Geelong in 1855. So they may have
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