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representatives for ever". Here he was interred by Lily, his wife for 35 years, in a 'nickel
polished coffin & breastings', having been brought to the cemetery in a 'glass hearse' attended
by one limousine. Such were the items listed on the undertakers' invoice, together with the cost
of death notices in The Sun, cemetery fees, the clergy fee, and £4.10.0 for removing the body -
all of which added up to £74.12.6.
Lily paid the bill the following month. But she never had the money for a headstone, and Jack's
grave is still unmarked.
The memorials of his father, Richard Honeycombe, are many - apart from his gravestone. They
are scattered through Melbourne, Geelong and Winchelsea and wherever Richard Honeycombe
worked and left his mark. For he did just that - on the stones he shaped.
In 1949 an old stonemason told Lance Finch, a Melbourne architect, that there used to be a
master stonemason called Bluey, whose mark was an H. He specialised in bluestone, the local
name for black basalt, which, because of its vesicular nature and the surname of the mason
much associated with it, was also known as honeycomb basalt. Latterly, this Honeycombe had
worked on stone gateposts or gateways. But he had also done work for stone viaducts and
bridges in and around Melbourne. Wrought stones only bore his marks - those big bluestone
blocks used as foundations for edifices of every kind. And these marks, on the top right of a
stone were an H - or, on a special stone an R H, his main mark, like this - .
Finch had found these marks on some basalt in Geelong and wondered which mason had made
them. He found them elsewhere - on the Treasury building in Melbourne, for instance - and they
might have been on the later basalt developments of St Patrick's Cathedral and of Parliament
House. And perhaps, we might add, of the third Government House.
Unknown to all but a few, a tough little stonemason called Richard Honeycombe had for over
50 years laboured on Victoria's buildings and left his initials on all that he touched.
He had made his mark.
212
Jt& John Goes For Gold
John Honeycombe was the last of the ten children of William and Elizabeth Honeycombe, who
emigrated to Australia in 1850 with their four youngest children, sailing on the Sea Queen. Born
in Meadow St, Bristol on 22 June 1842, when his mother was 44, John celebrated his eighth
birthday (if he did) on board the ship, two weeks before he and his family arrived in Melbourne.
His descendants would prove to be the most hard-working and successful of all the
Honeycombes in Australia, as well as the most beset with family tribulations and grief.
We know nothing about his childhood, which was spent mainly in Bristol, where his father, who
was a stonemason by trade, was in business as a builder with George Wilkins for a few years.
By 1848 the business had broken up and the four eldest children had gone their separate ways:
Mary Ann and Richard had married, and Jane had given birth to an illegitimate child; William
Robert would marry in Bristol the following year.
In 1849, when John was seven, his brother Henry was 15, and his sisters Elizabeth and Martha
were respectively eleven and nine. It is probable because his middle-aged parents were small in
stature, that he was a tiny child - although he apparently outgrew them later on - and because he
was the youngest, rather wild. The long voyage to Australia in 1850 was probably much
enjoyed by him and must have left him with some enduring memories and impressions,
especially the ports of call: Praia in the Cape Verde Islands and Cape Town in South Africa.
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