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respectable persons to proceed to the Australian Colonies, viz, Adelaide, Australia Felix or Port
Phillip, and Sydney, at the lowest possible cost consistent with security and comfort, say £15
per adult, with the ordinary description of accommodation, or £16 per adult when extra space,
with enclosed cabins, are required (including provisions), the undersigned have established a
Line of Superior First-Class Ships'.
These particular vessels sailed from London on the 1st and 15th of each month, stopping at
Plymouth on their way down the English Channel. Further particulars were to be had from the
shipping lines concerned, and their agents
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were ready in many towns and even in some villages, with useful books, pamphlets arid advice.
One such was a Dictionary of Medical and Surgical Knowledge and Complete Practical Guide
in Health and Disease for Families, Emigrants and Colonists- it appeared in 1850.
It advised: 'What is chiefly required is a couple of suits of common strong slops will! a
sufficiency of final, worsted find cotton stockings and a few handkerchiefs...Both adults and
children should wear on board light but not thin-soied shoes, made with buckles or elastic
sides'. Necessities included 'a knife, fork, tea and tablespoon, pewter plate, hook pot, pint mug
for tea, meat dish, waier can, washing basin, scrubbing brush ... 3 pounds of marine soap', etc.
Luxuries that might be brought included a ham, pickles, wine, brandy and jam.
There was also the example, and the letters, of those who had gone before. William's wife,
Elizabeth, had a relative who was a mariner (Thomas Furneaux), and even if William himself had
no friend or relative already in Australia to tell nirn what living there was like, he may nave had
some contact, in a sea-port like Bristol, with captains or sailors who had visited the various
Australian ports of call. Two of his neighbours in Hillsbridge Parade had been involved with
ships. There may have been others in Meadow Street.
That aside, Bristol was a ship-building centre, and one of the largest ships in the world, Brunei's
the Great Britain, had been launched at Bristol in July 1843, under the eye of Prince Albert.
Made of iron, with six masts and a six-bladed screw propeller, she was 320 feet long, and on
her first voyage In 1845 carried 850 passengers to New York, in i 852 she made her first fast
trip of many from Liverpool to Melbourne, before being commandeered to carry troops to the
Crimea. William Honeycombe may have witnessed the launching of the Great Britain in 1843:
thousands did. Besides, every day in the newspapers there were many items of nautical interest.
Was it from his reading or from some personal contact that William chose to sail to Port Phillip
(Melbourne} rather than to Sydney or to Adelaide? Or was he responding to some specific call
for stonemasons to work on the construction of public buildings in the new towns?
The Port Phiitip settlement, whose fertile grasslands had been dubbed 'Australia Felix' by the
Surveyor-General, Major Mitchell, in 1836, was fast becoming independent of New South
Wales and was already seeking the status of a separate colony. A bill to this effect would be
passed by the British government in November 1850, soon after William's arrival there.
ft must aiso be significant that Australia had been part of the consciousness of West Country
people in England, of those who were literate, for over 150 years. Indeed, the first Englishman
to walk on Australian soil and write about the new iand was born in a Somerset village near
Yeovii. He was the buccaneer and adventurer, William Dampier, who with the crew of the
pirate vessei, the Cygnet made a ianding on the coast of northwest Australia in January 1688 - a
hundred years before the arrival of the First Fleet in Botany Bay. He returned, officially, to
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