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Loch and Bullfinch continued to produce some gold until after the Great War. Nonetheless,
work would have been difficult to find. John Honeycombe must have had some good contacts
and friends, and have been a tough and knowledgeable gold-miner. For although he was in his
sixties, he continued to be employed in the mining industry until 1912.
Where he lived until then isn't known, but it must have been at or near his various places of
work, in somewhat primitive conditions. Whenever he could, he probably returned to
Kalgoorlie (whose Post Office he used as his address in1909) for pleasure, rest and
recuperation. He would have stayed in a boarding-house or in a room in some small hotel. At
this time, a good meal in a boarding-house, according to AB Facey, cost a shilling, and a bed
for the night 1/6.
In June 1907, John was 65. In that year, Arthur Bennett, a future newspaperman with the
Kalgoorlie Miner and The Sun (a local Sunday paper) came to Kalgoorlie with his parents. He
was nine. He wrote in his book The Glittering Years: 'My first impressions... were of wide,
reddish-brown streets and hundreds of homes built of wood and corrugated iron... Kalgoorlie
had hardly any trees, the summer sun was fierce, and away from the verandahs of the shops and
hotels there was little escape from the heat.'
Summer (December to March) was hot, but not humid in Kalgoorlie. The average maximum
temperature then was 32 degrees. Sometimes it exceeded 38 degrees for as long as three
weeks. Summer nights averaged about 18 degrees and no dew fell. Winter was chilly, with an
average overnight
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temperature as low as two degrees for about a fortnight. The wind could be cold then also. But
cloudless days were frequent, and wet days few.
Bennett continues: 'The town's finest buildings were in the main thoroughfare, Hannan Street.
These were a magnificent stone Post Office with tower and clock, and the imposing Palace
Hotel - and there was a vacant block where a grand Town Hall would go up. Tram-lines
extended along the chief streets into the outskirts of Kalgooriie, to the neighbouring town of
Boulder (a 15 minute ride) and to the Boulder Block, to take the gold-miners to work. The
trams had rope frames at front and back which everybody called cow-catchers, though I never
saw a cow around in the streets."
Bennett became a boy scout and a choir-boy, for which he was paid four pence a week. He
appeared in the 40-strong chorus of a children's opera, The Sylvan Queen, staged in Her
Majesty's Theatre in Dugan St by the Anglican Church community. This John Honeycombe is
unlikely to have seen. But he would have seen young Bennett among the schoolboys being
marched once a week from the State School to the small, enclosed swimming-pool or baths by
Victoria Park, opened in 1900. So keen were they to be first in the water that they stripped en
route, boots and shirts coming off, and vest and pants once they were in the building: none wore
swimming-costumes.
Another boy who took pleasure in the pool was AN Bingley (Bert), whose father, also Bert,
founded the Goldfields Motor Cycle Club in 1914. He wrote: 'What a pool it was. Most of us
lived in it, and how we survived laryngitis, typhoid, diphtheria and a few other diseases, I'll never
know. It was always jammed full of bodies, the sides were green and the water was always
murky except on the days it was topped up (twice a week)... I remember times when wrestlers
like Sammy Burmister would delight us by putting on turns, throwing us from one end to the
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