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Aunt Lil would say, years later, that her father was blind for about ten years. She said: 'If he
wanted to see grandpa and grandma in Albert Street, I used to take him there. He had a stick,
but he never used it like you see blind men now... Our mother couldn't read to him, as she could
hardly read herself. She couldn't even sign her own name properly. Her mother died when she
was an infant, and that left her and her father. He never sent her to school or anything like that.
An aunt took her in and had her work in the kitchen. So she never had any education. I don't
know how she mananged, but she did.'
It sounds as if times were hard for Dick and his family in the opening years of the new century
and during the apotheosis of the British Empire and the Edwardian age - King Edward VII was
crowned in August 1902.
Quarrying was still a major physical and economic feature of Footscray life. There were at least
a dozen quarries in the area, most of them north of the railway line to Geelong. In 1908 the
business run by the Rumpf brothers was bought by the Albion Quarrying Company, one of the
biggest of its kind in Victoria. Perhaps grandfather Richard and his son were employed there, or
at one of the two quarries on Gordon Street, or at the Footscray Council's quarry on Nicholson
Street North. And were they members of the Quarrymen and Stonecutter's Association formed
on 11 May 1906 at the Plough Hotel?
They must surely have belonged to one or other of the many church or sporting societies, clubs,
pubs, masonic lodges, or other groups that thrived in Footscray and organised frequent outings
and social events. Yet despite such vigorous activities and much civic pride, the community, in
1907, still lacked any public gardens or public hall, as well as any local library, swimming-pool,
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secondary school or its own brass band - although two brass bands and two parks, the Railway
Gardens and Footscray Park, came into being within three years. Footscray was also still not an
integral part of Melbourne, like Fitzroy and Carlton, being separated from the main city by two
rivers, the Saltwater and the Yarra, and by marshland and swamp. These were to the east of
Footscray; to the south was Yarraville and the easily accessible Williamstown and the beach.
To the north and west were many miles of fertile plains. In some respects Footscray, despite its
industrialisation and stinks, was still a booming country town.
In 1907 a telephone service was established linking Melbourne to Sydney, New Zealand
became a Dominion, and what has been called the "first Australian classic of the silent screen',
The Story of the Kelly Gang, was seen and acclaimed. Made by the Tait brothers on their
property near Heidelburg, it ran for about an hour and a half, and spoken dialogue was
provided by actors behind the screen. The Taits made other films, including Mystery of a
Hansom Cab, and such was the public's interest in this new and exciting entertainment that the
Federal Hall in Footscray was turned into a permanent picture theatre four years later, and the
first cinema to be built as such, The Grand, was opened the year after that, in time to screen the
antics of the Keystone Cops and the first Charlie Chaplin films.
Would that someone had filmed, as they could have by then, the diamond wedding anniversary
of Richard and Elizabeth Honeycombe of Albert Street in September 1907. Sixty years of
marriage were surely worth commemorating in some way, and if so something may have been
organised by the elderly couple's second son, Dick, and his wife Fanny, now living around the
corner in Buckley Street.
But Dick was blind and ailing; and he himself was 50 a few weeks before the event. His four
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