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Honeycombes were at Crocodile Creek. But it is through Lord Casey's grandfather trial some
connection with Mary's father, Patrick Casey, might be found to exist. The grandfather,
Cornelius Gavin Casey, emigrated from Liverpool in 1833, 20 years before Mary Casey was
born. It was from Liverpool that she and her parents emigrated. But Cornelius was not a
labourer. His father, Batholomew Casey, was a merchant, and Cornelius was a surgeon. As
such he worked for four years at the Tasmanian penal settlement at Port Arthur, until 1838,
when he married Letitia Gardiner, the daughter of a police magistrate. Thereafter he was
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Alexander Berry and his brothers and sisters. His wife - he married Edward Wollstonecroft's
sister, Elizabeth - died in 1845; they had no children. When Alexander Berry died, on 27
September 1873, in his 92nd year, the whole estate passed to a younger unmarried brother,
David Berry, who was by then 77. He had been managing the estate for the past 25 years.
By this time the old sawyers' camp further west had expanded into a small community
numbering about 320. It became known as Broughton Creek, and its simple dwellings dotted
the western bank of Broughton Mill Creek. The settlement was further developed by David
Berry with the addition of various grants of land (two acres each for the four main churches and
16 for a showground and a park), and in 1883 a grid pattern of streets was imposed on the
existing houses, five blocks by five, the streets being loyally named after the British royal family.
Various neat two-storey brick buildings with verandahs and other embellishments were erected,
including a post office, two banks, two hotels, a court-house, a school, a butcher's, a saddler's,
and a bacon factory. All were completed by the time David Berry died in 1889, at the age of
92.
Most of the newly created township, as well as the Coolangatta estate, passed on his death to a
first cousin once removed called John Hay, born in 1840. This large inheritance was soon,
however, hugely reduced by the executors' obligation of selling off great chunks of land to raise
money for David Berry's lavish bequests. These totalled £250,000. Among the beneficiaries
were St Andrew's University in Scotland (where Alexander Berry had been a student), and the
Presbyterian Church. John Hay dutifully assisted in this task, and died in the process in February
1909. By 1912, all that was left of the Berrys1 carefully nurtured domain was about 200 acres
of land around the original homestead at Cooiangatta.
Long before this, the grateful community of Broughton Creek had decided to recognise the local
and personal munificence of the Berry brothers. In 1890, by an act of parliament, the town's
name was changed to Berry.
A particular reason for gratitude was a grant of £100,000, given 'for the purpose of erecting and
endowing a hospital for non-infectious diseases for the special benefit of the inhabitants of
Broughton Creek (Berry) and the district of Shoalhaven and generally of all persons to whom it
might be accessible.' A financial deal was made by David Berry's executors with the New South
Wales government. This resulted in the David Berry Hospital Act of December 1906, whereby
the state was given large tracts of land in north Sydney, in exchange for the erection and
maintenance of the hospital.
Here Mary Honeycombe worked for a time, and here, in 1912, she died.
Those financial and other arrangements took some time to be realised, and in 1894, five years
after David Berry's death, a temporary hospital, known as the Cottage Hospital, was opened in
Pulman Street, in a disused store once run by James Wilson. At the opening of the Cottage
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