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set apart from all the other gold leads and reefs in the area. A book, Gold and Ghosts, says:
'When discovered in 1894, some 200 men rushed to the area and started prospecting along the
course of the lead. At the head of the gully, the lead occurs on the surface. But the further east it
was traced the deeper it became, until at 7.6m the bottom was still not found. Further sinking
became impossible, due to too much water and the lowering of the gold yield1.
230
Was it John Honeycombe who discovered gold in this gully south of Clermont in 1894 and
sparked the rush? We would like to think so. But other place names in the area suggest that
Honeycomb is again associated with the product of the bee. For some 3km to the north of
Honeycomb Lead is Busy Bee Gully and Busy Bee Lead. And beyond Clermont was a
goldmine called Native Bee.
The other place called Honeycombe known to me in Australia is in Western Australia, some
85km north of Perth.
One day I was driving along the Brand Highway on the way to view the scenic yellow desert
area of the Pinnacles when a signpost north of Gingin caught my eye. It pointed to a road going
inland and said Honeycomb. Investigating, I came to a gateway by a T-junction, and on the
ironwork of the gate was the legend HONEYCOMB. A short drive led through a well-tended
garden to a modern house, where a middle-aged woman came to the door. No, she didn't
know why the property was called Honeycomb, but as there was a Bee Creek not far away,
she supposed it had something to do with bees. No Honeycombes had ever lived there as far as
she knew.
But she knew a Honeycombe, she said. Her son was going out with a Karen Honeycombe who
lived in Geraldton. Good heavens - what a coincidence, I thought.
I knew Karen and had met her at the Honeycombe Heritage Weekend in Cornwall in
September 1984, which had been attended by 160 Honeycombes, not all so named of course,
from most corners of the English-speaking world. Karen had then been married to Sandy
Honeycombe of New Zealand. They were now divorced. And now she was being wooed by
the son and heir of Honeycomb, WA. Would they marry? And would a Honeycombe, albeit by
name, live at Honeycomb again?
Alas, they didn't. And this Honeycomb, like that other homestead in the Big Bend country in
Queensland, merely commemorates the product of the bee, and not ancestral territory won and
named and lost.
Was John Honeycombe ever aware in Crocodile Creek of the thousands of acres to the west
that bore his surname? Did someone ever tell him about it? It they did, he must have wondered,
as I once did, how and why the property got its name, and whether a lost inheritance was
involved. For out of such land could fortunes be made and dynasties founded. But not John's.
His and his children's destinies lay elsewhere.
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29 Mary Goes Mad
In 1893 John Honeycombe's family were back in Charters Towers, which they had left nine
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