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next ten years. Esther's grandchildren (including John and Lloyd) and great-grandchildren (via
Rene) received £50 each. She had three life insurance policies, and was worth in all - and what
a difference from the 25 shillings she is said to have had in her purse when she came to Ayr -
just over £13,400.
Esther had tried to be fair, and Bill was not forgotten, although he inevitably felt aggrieved at the
far greater rewards bestowed on Alma and in particular on Len. He lingered in Ayr for a few
weeks, but no further amends were made. Bill was deeply hurt. When he returned to Ayr in
December that year for Lloyd Wilson's funeral nothing more was gained. Instead, he was
persuaded to sell his share in Allotment 9 to Alma and Len, for a sum that he felt was unfairly
low. Although Alma kept in touch with him, and later his second son, Lloyd, it was only Lloyd's
education and job prospects that thereafter brought Bill north, and when that was resolved he
stayed away.
In the meantime Len, having announced the end of an era, added: 'We've got to change too. It's
time to get out of groceries, and into farming and land.'
'It was a very difficult decision to make,' said John. 'But it was the right decision, as cane farms
have prospered and groceries haven't - in 1956 the chain store BBC opened their first store in
Ayr. We couldn't have competed with them.'
On 18 October 1954 Len and Alma accepted an offer for the Progressive Store and the CCS
shop on Macmillian Street from Coutts Ltd - to include 'the goodwill of both businesses (if any),
all fixtures, fittings, refrigeration, scales, trucks, bacon cutters and all other plant and equipment
together with stock-in-trade.' Coutts agreed to pay just over £8,000. The sale of the
Grocerteria in Queen Street was also initiated, and the store was eventually sold to Coutts,
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plus trucks, fittings and stock, for £3,750 in March 1955, a clause in the contract specifying that
Coutts had to remove all Honeycombe signs and 'not use the name Honeycombe in any way
with the future conduct of the said business.'
With £9,000 of the money Len received from the sale of the three stores he and Alma bought
the second cane farm at Hutching's Lagoon.
Len was able to make such wholesale changes because his mother was dead and Alma's
husband was ill. He was now the man in total charge. Even John was away from the scene.
Eighteen in August 1954, John had travelled to Sydney for a two-week holiday; on Mount
Kosciusko he saw his first snow and had a snowball fight with a friend. Then after his birthday
he went off to do his National Service at a military training area south of Brisbane. A few
months later John received a telephone call from Alma. She said: 'You better come home and
help look after things. Len's had a nervous breakdown.1
This occurred in October, and must have been occasioned by Len's business worries and the
radical decisions concerning the selling of the grocery stores - something that his mother would
not perhaps have wanted. There was something else. Len was 48 on 14 October, and a few
days later he received a letter from the District Registrar in Charters Towers in response to one
from him asking for a copy of his mother's birth certificate. It said: 'I am unable to find any
record of this birth. However, Birth entry 1375 records the birth of an illegitimate female child
MARY ESTHER who was born to Johannah formerly Black now Weston. The date of birth is
3 October 1879.'
Len's mother had called herself Irene Mary Esther Chapman when she married; now it
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