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Australia between February and April. The visit, the first by a reigning monarch, was hailed by
huge crowds and with much loyal fervour. Among the crowds greeting the Queen in Townsville
was John Honeycombe. He gave her a wave. On that same day she met several local
dignitaries, among them the Chairman of the Burdekin Shire, Ernie Ford -the father of John's
future wife. Ernie noted in his diary: 'Met the Queen.'
Although the coronation had been televised in the UK, the first TV station in Australia, TCN 9
in Sydney, did not start transmitting until September 1956. This was one technical and all-
pervasive innovation that Esther Honeycombe never saw. For when her grandson John was a
month short of his eighteenth birthday, Esther died.
Esther Honeycombe died in Ayr aged 74, worn out by years and long hours of seldom
alleviated work, on 25 July 1954, a Sunday. Ethel said of her: 'She was a very hard-working
woman; she really lived for her family. But she had a sense of fun.'
John said: 'I always had a high opinion of her; she was always very kind to me... I was there
when she died. She died at home, in the double bed in Alma's main bedroom. I was living next
door at the time, in her house. Alma was there, and Len, and the priest from the local church.
About an hour or two before she died she said: "There's Johnny... He never could handle those
horses." Obviously her mind had gone back to her days at Charters Towers when she was a
young girl. She had a brother called Johnny; she thought she could hear him bringing the horses
in.'
The funeral was on the Tuesday morning, 27 July, at All Saints Church. Bill came north for the
funeral, staying with John in Esther's house; Zoe ignored him. Rene and Horace Horn came up
from Brisbane and Bob Honeycombe and his mother Selina from Charters Towers. All three of
Esther's husband's elderly sisters were there: Jenny Butcher, Annie Johnson and Nellie
McHugh. So was a certain "Mr T Weston' and some of the Chapmans, including a 'Mr John
Chapman'. Was he Esther's younger half-brother Johnny, whom she pictured as she died? Was
he the youngest child of Annie Chapman, whom she had christened John Valentine Black?
Mrs Rickard was also there: as Nellie Peel she was cared for by Esther when both were little
girls. Nellie Rickard said, as the coffin went to its grave: 'Perhaps Esther will rest at last.'
It was the last time all these descendants and relatives of John Honeycombe the goldminer and
Irish Mary his wife would meet. As Len said, it was the end of an era -100 years in fact since
the first family of Australian Honeycombes settled in Geelong.
The family solicitor, old Mr Dean, had also come to Ayr from Townsville for the funeral.
Afterwards he read the will.
Esther's grandson John recalled: 'It was July, one of the winter months, and everybody sat out in
the sun, in cane chairs on the lawn, and he read the will in the garden at the side of the house
straight after the funeral. Most of Esther's estate, however, had already been passed on to Alma
and Len.'
The will had been drawn up two years earlier. In it, Esther left her piano to Alma, while all the
rest of her furniture and the contents of her home were to be divided equally between Alma and
Rene. The house itself was to be sold for removal and the net proceeds divided equally between
her four children, Rene, Bill, Alma and Len; the land on which the house stood (Allotment 9 of
Section 50) was given to Bill, Len and Alma as joint tenants thereof. The rest of her estate was
to be divided between Alma and Len. A loan of £5,000 to Len was 'forgiven' - cancelled. He
also received a legacy of £500. Rene was given £400 and £50 in annual instalments over the
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