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and dancing went on till early morning to the music of piano and accordion, and later to a four-
piece band from Rockhampton... It was a great get-together for the River people'.
In 1928 the first large herd of Brahman cattle came to Leura from Christmas Creek. Leura was
then owned and run by the Beak family (as it is to this day). One of the drovers who helped out
on that drive was George Butcher junior, grandson of John Honeycombe the gold-miner.
Other herds were generally made up of Aberdeen Angus or Hereford cattle. The eradication of
the prickly pear menace by the outbreak of the Second World War opened up much of the Big
Bend country for development. Before that, drought and floods, fire, disease and death, had
wrought constant changes in the size and ownership of properties. Stations grew and dwindled;
homesteads were burnt down or rebuilt elsewhere. Dynastic marriages were made; the more
than middle-aged retired to villas in Rockhampton.
Big losses of stock caused by the floods of 1916 and 1918 forced Joseph Bauman to sell
Honeycombe and move to Redbank, a few miles north of Dingo. The property was bought by
Edward Adams. He sold it to Jack Edgar. The next
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owners, in 1949, were Wallace and Judith Mackenzie. More severe flooding in the early 1950's
made the Mackenzies sell out to Lindsay Murray in 1954. The Murrays retained the property
until 1980. It is now run by Gary and Kylie Maguire.
In May 1989, Kylie Maguire wrote: 'Honeycombe is situated 100km north of Dingo on the
Mount Flora beef road. Dingo is situated 150km west of Rockhampton. There are no original
buildings on Honeycombe now. The oldest remaining piece of history is a grave. The person
buried there is James McLennan, who died in 1905 at the age of 46. Apparently he was killed
while chasing brumbies. Honeycombe is 15,000 acres in size consisting mainly of flat black soil
brigalow country'.
About 20 miles southwest of Honeycombe is Ashgrove. In 1919 it was selected by two of the
eight Laver brothers, Les and Roy, who had come north from Gippsland. They sold Ashgrove
in 1936, but not before Roy Laver had married Melba Roffey and produced a son called Rod -
who in 1962 became the first Australian tennis player to win the French, English and American
mens' singles' titles, the Grand Slam.
Two other Laver brothers, Arthur and Bert, owned the property nearest Honeycombe, called
Gordon. The fact that Gordon and Honeycombe are situated within a few miles of each other is
a specially pleasing coincidence to this author.
But I regretfully doubt whether any Honeycombe ever owned, or named, Honeycombe. For the
map shows not just Gordon in the vicinity. Across the river is not only Honeycomb Creek, but
Bee Creek. And off to the right is Apis Creek. Apis is the Latin for a bee.
The man who first named these places must have had bees on the brain , or have been stung or
have stolen their honey.
There seems little doubt that the 19th century spelling of what appeared to be an ancestral
Honeycombe homestead was quite exact, and that the property properly bears the name of the
homestead of the bee - honeycomb.
There are two other places called Honeycomb in Australia - there may be more. One is in
Queensland, not that far from the Honeycombe homestead in the Big Bend country . South of
Clermont and about 120km west of Honeycombe is the Honeycomb Lead.
It lies on the outer edge of the once active Clermont goldfield, south of McDonald's Flat, and is
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