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Jane at Roslyn were run by John Cooper, Joseph Willsher and the Tramp brothers. Grander
suburban neighbours were Charles Nuttal! Thorne, JP, in Thornhill, and his former business
partner, Thomas Maber Sparks, in Fernside - which would one day be the next home of Jane
and Lawrence.
The Wesieyan Church at Highton, on the corner of Barrabool Road and Scenic Road, was iess
than a kilometre away from Roslyn's main gates, and Lawrence and Jane were much involved, it
seems, in church activities, although the pace of their lives, and that of Geelong, had slowed.
The decade before 1861 had been a golden one for Geelong, and was later regarded by older
townspeople as 'the good old days'. But in the 1860s, the woolly masses on which Geelong's
stability depended, and would save it from going bust after the boom (as other towns did)
seemed to infect it with rural torpor. The town became known as Sleepy Hollow. Melbourne's
population had soared in 1861 to 125,000. Geelong's had already fallen, its highest peak, just
over 23,000, having been reached in 1857. This peak would not be surpassed for more than 40
years, until 1901.
Projects launched enthusiastically in the 1850s had proved to be slow to materialise, although
the Town Hall, the Chamber of Commerce, the Post Office, Custom's House, clock tower, fire
station and various schools, banks and churches, as well as the 96th hotel, eventually stood fair
and square along weil-made roads and pavements, lit by gas-light by 1861. These roads were,
however, still virtually treeless and beset with dust. But by 1861 the Botanical Gardens had
been laid out and planted and Queenscliff had been established as a seaside resort. There was
greater scope for leisure by then, and a wide variety of social pursuits. Cricket and football
clubs had been formed and there was a Yacht Club. But horse-racing was the most popular
sport, followed by swimming, athletics, croquet and quoits. Melodramas were also well
attended at the theatres, and acrobatic events.
It was now possible to travel by train all the way to Melbourne. The opening of the railway line
connecting Geelong to Melbourne (which cost £600,000 in ail to construct) had been
inaugurated in June 1857. To mark the occasion, a special train bearing the Governor and a
hundred worthies had left Geelong at 10.00am amid much acclaim - and dismay, when the
locomotive superintendent, Henry Walter, was knocked off the engine as it passed under a
bridge and was killed.
The return fare to Melbourne in September 1860 was 10/6 First Class. It was 6 shillings
Second Class. The Third Class was scrapped that year.
There was still a large percentage of Scots in Geelong. Of the 26 schools that were educating
over 2,400 pupils in 1858, three were national or state schools, six were Church of England,
four Catholic, six Wesieyan, three
Methodist, two Scotch Free, one Scottish, and one Gaelic. And there were 25 Sunday schools.
Sobriety and serious thought, good works and good behaviour, were the order of not just
Sunday but of every working day.
Not much of special moment happened to the Honeycombes and the Mountjoys in the early
1860s: Martha Honeycombe married Charles Chapman; Richard and Elizabeth Honeycombe
produced two more children in Geelong; and two were added to Richard and Mary Mountjoy's
family, as well as to the families of Caleb and Louisa, Thomas and Sophie.
By this time William Honeycombe was probably living with Jane and Lawrence at Roslyn, now
that his son Henry had died, his two youngest daughters had married, and his youngest son,
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