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been a fit looking, handsome man, with a fine white walrus moustache. A few months later his
wife, Mary, died in far-off New South Wales.
Which of the Caseys or Honeycombes wrote to him with this piece of news? What did he feel?
He and Mary had been married for 31 years, although they had been apart for at least half that
time. She had give birth to his six children, and endured some measure of hardship and pain.
How much? Only he could tell.
His circumstances were now much reduced, by his age and lack of funds. How much had he
saved? How much had he spent? The room he rented in Hannan's Chambers would have been
sparsely furnished but comfortable enough. The two-storey brick lodging-house at the rear of
Park Buildings in Hannan St had originally been built as living quarters for the staff at the
adjacent Palace Hotel. But by 1912, Kalgoorlie's population had fallen to 7,000, and the lack
of visitors had diminished the need for any large number of full-time staff.
Hannan's Chambers consisted of two floors of single high-ceilinged rooms, on either side of a
central corridor, with wash-rooms at the far end and a dining room and kitchen on the ground
floor. A yard separated the Chambers (a common name for single-room accommodation in
Kalgoorlie then) from Park Buildings and the chemist, estate agents, solicitor's, clothier's,
tobacconist and restaurant fronting Hannan St. The town's chief photographer, JJ Dwyer, also
had a studio there.
The Palace Hotel, on the main intersection with Maritana St, was managed by F Cook Spencer,
who was a mine of stories and information about former hotel guests and customers, famous or
otherwise. He also had a fine collection of stones and minerals. The hotel, and its bars, must
have been John Honeycombe's daily haunt, for company as much as for a drink. But most of his
cronies by now would have gone - either dead and buried, or departed for more thriving and
civilized pastures, such as Perth or the towns on the southern coast.
John stayed on, reluctant to move, to change his ways and face the uncertain welcome of
Charters Towers. Where else would he go? In Kalgoorlie, he was known, had a few tried and
tested friends. Besides, there was the huge cost of any journey by sea, and train: the first Trans-
Australian train would not run until 1917. There were cheap train excursions to Perth. But the
usual cost was 12 shillings per 100 kilometres, and even that journey took 16 hours. Flying was
still in its infancy.
When the first plane made and seen in Western Australia arrived in Kalgoorlie in 1913, did John
view it as some miraculous means of escape? Within six years a similar amazing flying-machine
would span oceans and continents, taking Ross and Keith Smith from England to Australia. But
John would never fly anywhere, although he may have fantasised about flying home -not to
Queensland, but to the green fields of England, his native land.
The plane that had landed on Kalgoorlie racecourse in 1913 was actually constructed by local
technicians and mechanics in Coolgardie, and was powered by a 50 horse-power engine
bought for £50 and brought from England. It had
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two test-flights and crashed once before it reached Kalgoorlie. There, to the acclaim of half the
population, with the men wearing boaters and the women ankle-length skirts, it gave a
demonstration flight, climbing up to 600 meters, A female passenger on a second flight (she had
won the trip in a Red Cross auction), panicked. Seated in front of the pilot, Ted Geere, she
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