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Family sources, as has been noted in Chapter Six, say that John 'came with his parents as a
child from South Africa' - which indeed he did - and that he 'lost an eye in a goldmine in South
Africa before coming to Melbourne'.
John certainly had a glass eye in later life and as early as his twenties. When and how he lost the
original is unknown. He could never have been a gold-miner in South Africa, as the first major
goldrush there did not occur until 1885, when John was definitely in Queensland. It seems that
the two oral traditions have become confused. For another John Honeycombe was in South
Africa in 1885, working in a goldmine, although as far as we know he never had an accident
involving the loss of an eye, or limb. On tho othor hand, oral tcartil inn may include, a truth that
our John accidentally \uH di i uye ai a ffltfe boy, whon tho Soo Queen otoppod at Cape Town
for provisions an the voyage
SUtr
The fact is that we have only one documented record of John's existence and whereabouts
between his birth in 1842 and his marriage in Charters Towers, nearly 40 years later. And that
is a photograph taken in a studio in Ballarat about 1866, when John would have been 24.
Despite the beard, the face and firm stance are those of quite a young man. The artificial left eye
is very noticeable, compared with the pale blue (one
214
supposes) of the right. John stares boldly at the camera: he is a good-looking fellow, slim and
well-groomed, with his polished shoes, smart cane, fob-watch and gold chain. Comparing his
height with that of the low chair, one imagines him to have been about 5'6", above average
height in those days.
Would that we knew when the photo was taken, and why. And what was John doing in
Ballarat? How long had he been living and working there? Was the photograph taken on his
birthday, after a particularly good season mining for gold?
John seems to have been a gold-miner all his life, although in his youth he could have been many
things. For, apart from the photo, no positive record of John's whereabouts or activities has
been found between that which dates his arrival in Australia in July 1850 and that which
documents his marriage in Queensland in July 1881. Where was he in those 31 intervening
years?
His mother died in Melbourne, we know, in April 1851, and five months later his father
remarried, his second wife being the schoolteacher Elizabeth Hicks. Was she in part responsible
for the fact that John, as well as his younger sisters, could write a good hand? Her influence in
other respects was probably disruptive. For in October 1852, 14-year-old Elizabeth
Honeycombe married Charles Franklin, who was aged 31; and within two years the children's
stepmother had decamped to Tasmania and William had taken himself and his children to
Geelong.
It would seem the move was made in 1853, for in September that year Richard Honeycombe,
his wife and their first three children arrived in Geelong, to be followed in July 1854 by Jane.
She married Lawrence Mountjoy a year or so later, in November 1854.
John was 12 that year. He was presumably living with his father in Noble Street, along with his
older brother Henry, now a 20-year-old stonemason, and his sister Martha, who probably kept
house and cooked for her two brothers and father, although she was but 14 years of age. These
duties may have been forced on her when her older sister left the household to get wed.
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