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pick up any heartbeat.'
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In answer to a question from Mr Everard, Ken replied: 'I think the firewood may have butted
into the mare's rump. The breeching may have been too long.'
Dr Larkins told the coroner: 'I found the deceased lying on his back on the ground. He was in a
very deeply shocked condition, and died within a few moments. Examination just after death
showed that his spine was completely fractured in the upper lumbar region.1
Senior Constable Black said: 'In response to a telephone message from Dr Larkins I went to the
property of Mr Reuben F Jarvis of Cudgewa. In a paddock about 600 yards from Mr Jarvis's
house I could see the marks where a cartwheel had passed over some object. A pair of heavy
boots was lying at the spot, which was 57 yards from the opening into the paddock. Between
the opening into the paddock and where the boots were lying I could see where the wheel
tracks of the cart had passed over furrows... At the bottom of the paddock, about 600 yards
from where the boots lay, I saw a spring cart upturned and some firewood lying underneath and
beside it.'
Gwen was widowed at the age of 26. She wrote to Bill about Norman's death and from
wherever Bill was then living and working he travelled to Cudgewa, to provide what help and
consolation he could. It seems that before long he made up his mind that he wanted to spend the
rest of his life with Gwen, and not in Ayr, and give her and her fatherless child a home.
We do not know whether he returned to Ayr that September, but in order to acquire some
capital and sever some family connections, he sold his quarter share in the family business to
Len and Alma. Esther was very upset by this, by the fact that her eldest son intended to
abandon not only the business but his wife and two young sons and move in with another
woman down south. Bill was upset because he felt that Len managed to do him out of the full
value of his share and that the amount to be paid in dividends to Zoe was insufficient to support
her and the boys. Ill-feeling and resentment were rife, and the family rift was never fully healed.
Zoe never forgave Bill for deserting her, and her bitterness influenced her attitude to his family
for many years. Esther was less unforgiving, although Bill had betrayed his father's aspirations
and her expectations, and his name. The Ayr Honeycombes and Bill hardly ever met again,
except at funerals (although Alma kept in touch with him), and none of the older ones ever met
Gwen. She was 'that woman' to Esther. To Zoe she was 'that bitch1.
Before Bill left Queensland earlier that year he had taken his two sons to their new schools; it
was a first day for both. In February 1949 he had walked down the road with five-year-old
Lloyd to Ayr State School, and then had driven 12-year-old John to a boarding school, All
Souls School in Charters Towers, which was run by the Brotherhood of St Barnabas, an
Anglican teaching order, although not many of the teachers were brothers. Then Bill drove south
to Sydney.
When he and Gwen began living together we do not know. But her little daughter Pam is said
(by Pam) to have lived with her grandmother until 1952,
383
dusting them. And then I would push the big broom, sweeping the store inside and out. On
Saturday mornings I got paid - about two shillings a week... When I was about seven or eight I
started playing football and rugby league; I was fairly big for my age. After football matches
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