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children - the two eldest were now at work - were now 17 (Louisa), 15 (Jessie), 13 (Lilian -
Aunt Lil), and 11 (Richard junior). Dick's older brother, George the coach-painter, and his wife
Eliza, were still in Albion Street, South Yarra; Tom's widow, Catherine, was in Fitzroy; and
Jack and his family were still in Johannesburg.
The old couple, now 78 and 85 and still attended by their spinster daughter, Jane, were given an
anniversary present of a sort the following year when Prime Minister Alfred Deakin's
government introduced old age and invalid pensions of ten shillings a week.
Other notable events of 1908 were the naming of Canberra as the site of the Commonwealth
Government's new home; the staging of the first surf carnival and competition at Manly; and the
publication of Mrs Gunn's story of outback life, We of the Never-Never.
The first of Richard and Elizabeth's eleven grandchildren to marry was Tom's daughter,
Elizabeth Mary. A dressmaker, aged 26 and living at 18 Falconer Street, North Fitzroy (where
the marriage took place, solemnised by a Methodist minister), she wed Joseph Richards, a 27-
year-old process engraver from North Fitzroy, whose father was described in the marriage
certificate as a
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Commonwealth. The aborigines were not represented. Last of all came the new Governor-
General, Lord Hopetoun, who in due course officially proclaimed Australia a Commonwealth -
whereupon 'a choir of 10,000 children, 1,000 adults and 10 brass bands thundered forth the
National Anthem.'
Melbourne's celebrations were much more subdued. There was a salute of 101 guns and the
city was decked with flags. It was a public holiday, but no public functions were held - just as
well, as it rained. Melbourne's turn for lavish ceremonies would come in May, when the first
Federal Parliament was opened in the city. In the meantime, on 22 January 1901, Queen
Victoria died. Public buildings and city shops and stores, like Hooper's in Footscray, were now
draped in purple and black.
Aged 81, Victoria had reigned for 63 years, since 1837, and throughout the half-century that
the Honeycombes had been in Australia. She had seemed immortal, as permanent and as proud
a symbol as Britannia, and as enduring as the Empire itself.
Richard Honeycombe had been eight years old when Victoria, then a young girl, become queen;
he was now 71. It must have seemed like the end of an era and the start of a new one. But how
much would Richard see of it? How much did he care? A death in his own family must have
made him aware of his own mortality. On 3 March 1901 his third son, Tom, newly returned
from South Africa, died of phthisis in North Carlton; he was 41.
WH Newnham in Melbourne describes one of the city's most extravagantly theatrical occasions
which some of the Honeycombes could hardly have failed to observe, as spectators at least -
the inauguration of the new nation's first Parliament.
'On 6 May 1901, a perfect autumn day, the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (later
King George V and Queen Mary) landed at St Kilda three miles from the city, and drove
through decorated streets to Government House. Four days later they drove in state to the
Exhibition Buildings, where 15,000 people had been invited to the most important ceremony in
the history of a nation - the opening of its first parliament. The first Governor-General of
Australia, Lord Hopetoun, escorted the Royal couple to their thrones under the great central
dome of the vast building. Behind the Duke and Duchess sat the governors and lieutenant-
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