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be joined to Geelong by the railways until late in 1876, Richard and his large family must have
travelled thither by coach.
There is the possibility that Richard moved there earlier, as a new bluestone bridge across the
Barwon River was constructed in 1869 - it was opened by Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh.
A 42-room two-storey bluestone mansion in Barwon Park, belonging to Thomas Austin, was
also built in 1869.
It was Mr Austin, a wealthy grazier, who later collected a consignment of fauna from the clipper
Lightning to adorn his house and grounds. Among the domestic animals were 24 rabbits, which
he released to play along the river. Play they did, and became a plague.
156
The Honeycombes' stay in Winchelsea may have been curtailed by an out-of-wedlock
pregnancy. For in Geelong in June 1872, Richard's second daughter, Mary Ann, known as
Annie, gave birth to a baby girl.
The baby must have been conceived the previous year, in Winchelsea -unless Mary Ann had
stayed behind in Geelong, perhaps employed as a domestic there. She was 21 when the baby
was born, in Elizabeth St, Kildare, and her mother, Elizabeth, who was also living in Kildare,
informed the Registrar. Although the baby's father is not named, the baby was called Margaret
Mary Robertson - which would seem to point a finger at the man involved. But when the child
died of convulsions four years later, she was called Mary Margaret Honeycombe.
Her death occurred in John's Street, Geelong, at the home of a foster mother, Henrietta West.
Evidently Mary Ann Honeycombe's indiscretion had been hushed up and tidied away - she
married four months later.
Possibly, as with her Aunt Jane, her father and the rest of her family knew nothing of the matter.
But as Richard is recorded as living in Geelong in 1872 -and never thereafter - it seems as if the
birth of Mary Ann's illegitimate baby that year and the subsequent departure of her family from
Geelong are somehow connected.
After this mishap, Mary Ann was despatched, or fled, to Benalla, some 160 km northeast of
Melbourne. There, on 30 October 1872, at the Primitive Methodist Parsonage, she married a
German-born farmer and widower, Charles Regelsen. Aged 34, his wife had died the previous
year, after providing him with one child.
We know something of Mary Ann's life thereafter from the few letters her eldest son Charles
Regelsen wrote to me from Newport, Victoria, in 1972.
Hesaid: 'Father died 1914 (result of a fall), my mother early in 1943. The family were 9, 6 or
them girls, 3 boys; all the girls came first; the boys came last. I was the first, the twins the last... I
am 85, my two sisters are older, Mrs Jenkins and Mrs Grieg. I am the only REGELSEN alive...
George died of wounds in World War I, and is buried at Armentieres on the Somme. Dick
passed away in 1943, as did my mother at 92... I left Victoria in October 1913. Transferred to
Brisbane, was 18 years there, 9 in Adelaide, and three in Sydney; came back to Victoria... I
was transferred from Adelaide to Melbourne at Xmas 1943, and spent 3VS years there in the
Pay Corps... Wife died nearly 10 years ago, lived alone ever since.'
Such are the bare bones of family histories, lists of places, names and dates - unless we breathe
life on them, substance and shape, from the dust and social histories of contemporary records
and other facts.
Family legends and traditions can add some colour, but they are apt to be vainglorious and to
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