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More of this later - and of William's son, Richard Honeycombe, who continued to live in
Geelong. After Emma was born there in May 1855, Richard and his wife had five more
children, all born in Geelong, the last in November 1865. They had a total of nine.
Let us return to Jane and Lawrence Mountjoy, and to the change of direction and status that
would later lead to Thomas Mountjoy being featured in the Victorian Who's Who.
According to this entry, Thomas began farming with his younger brother, Caleb, in the
Barrabool Hills 'after a year on the gold-fields.'
Thomas was certainly resident there in 1857, as his first child, christened William Allin
Mountjoy, was born in the Barrabooi Hiils on 20 May that year. In that birth certificate, Thomas
the shoemaker, still said to be 27, is now described as a 'farmer.' It seems likely that Sophia's
father either provided Thomas with the wherewithal to lease some land, or offered him a
partnership in the land he already had.
Thomas and Sophia remained in the Barrabool Hills for 12 years, farming. For five other
children were born there - Thomas, Alfred, Francis, Edgar and Florence (bom in April 1869) -
and in every birth certificate the occupation of the babies' father is 'farmer'.
As we know, Richard, Lawrence and Caleb Mountjoy are all listed in the 1856 Electoral Roll
as 'labourers' living in Geelong.
But in 1855, Caleb is described as a 'shoemaker1 when his first child, christened Lawrence
Harward Mountjoy, is born on 16 June in South Geelong. When his second child, James, is
bom two years later in the Barrabool Hills, on 10 June 1858. Caleb is stiil a 'shoemaker'. But
on the birth certificate of his third child, Harward, born on 24 May 1860 (at Mount Bolton
Springs, Lexton, in the district of Learmonth), Caleb is now a 'farmer'. And for the next 15
years, up to 1875, his next six children are born in the Barrabool Hills, near Ceres.
Richard Mountjoy, who had emigrated with his wife Mary and six children in 1852, was still in
South Geelong and a 'labourer' in 1857. For his eighth child, Emma Elizabeth, was born there
on 16 February that year. But the ninth child, Harriet, was born in May 1858 in the Barrabool
Hills, where three more would be born and where he would die, at Ceres, in 1866.
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It is evident therefore, that Thomas Mountjoy's move to the Barrabool Hills in 1857 (if not the
previous year) and his new occupation as a farmer, motivated Caleb and Richard to follow him
in 1358. Lawrence and Jane Mountjoy disappear from their address in Geelong that same year,
and almost certainly joined the other Mountjoys on the farmlands of the Barrabool Hills.
Two later sources (JH Bottrell, and an article in the March 1982 edition of the Investigator) say
that Lawrence and Caleb Mountjoy fanned there together, and that their farm was called
Roslyn.
The Investigator adds: 'To show how rich the soil was on this estate, Mr Caleb said that on one
occasion when he was in the mangel-wurzel paddock, he decided to take home two of these
with him, and so heavy were they that by the time he reached the homestead he was completely
exhausted-1
These farmlands were later described as 'Geelong's back garden - a granary, a source of fruit, a
source of wine - in fact, the town's bread and butter'.
They had been sectioned off and sold in February 1840, when they covered an area of about
13 square miles; they were situated south of the Barwon River and west of the Geelong town
boundary. A track later known as the Barrabool Hills Road ran through them, from Geelong to
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