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Mountain Views: 'It's pretty hard to keep a secret at school, and I think most people were
pretty shocked... Very few asked me how I was going. They mostly asked my best friends, and
often the question was whether or not I was going to die... Chemotherapy was pretty tough. It
drains your energy, and I found it very hard to do the things I used to do... Others were worse
off than me. In the hospital one of the boys in my ward had his leg amputated and another a
total hip replacement. A third died a week after I left... You can read about it, talk about it, hear
about it. But no one really knows what it's like until they have been there.'
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Chris Honevcombe
Chris was the second son of Alan and Beth and was born in Melbourne on 8 April 1976. He
died there in 1992, aged 16.
Of all the Honeycombes in Australia, and indeed the world, he achieved the most in his chosen
sport and showed the greatest promise. He might have been a world champion if he had lived.
He was a descendant of Richard the stonemason, who lived to be 95.
Chris was brought up in Healesville, a rural community east of Melbourne and near the Yarra
River, where his father taught maths and environmental studies; Alan was also a student welfare
co-ordinator. Chris's mother, whose parents were Dutch, was a hospital nurse, also dealing with
midwifery. The family were faithful supporters of the local Uniting Church. Ross, the eldest boy
was five and a half years older than Chris; then came Sharyn. Danielle was the youngest: she
was nine when her brother died.
As a boy, Chris was very energetic, inquisitive and determined. He was also very competitive,
and thrived on the challenges invovled in keeping up with his older brother and sister. By 1988,
having developed a strong interest in swimming, he decided he needed to join Victoria's leading
swimming club, Nunawading, to obtain the best coaching and training. He refused to consider
any other club, and suceeded in this ambition. The 100 km round trip to Nunawading, by public
transport, failed to diminish his enthusiasm, and in 1990 he joined Leigh Nugent's national
squad. The following year, just before his 15th birthday he won two gold medals at the
Victorian High School Championships in Melbourne, in the 50 metres backstroke and
breaststroke. His goal was to swim for Australia in the 1994 Commonwealth Games.
By now, Chris held 15 swimming records at his school, also excelling in freestyle swimming and
butterfly. He was 6 feet tall, grey-eyed, fair-haired, nice-looking and superbly fit.
Eight weeks after winning gold at the Victorian championships he was diagnosed as having
cancer. That was in June 1991. Chris was just 15.
In February 1993, Chris's father, Alan, sent me at my request an account of his son's death,
three months after it happened. In the accompanying letter he wrote: 'I'm sorry it took so long to
put together. It was something I really wanted to do, but found it very difficult. It's amazing how
a few tears make it impossible to read a computer screen.'
Alan entitled his account of Chris's illness and death Life is Short.
'When a young person dies a seemingly unnecessary death, we find it almost impossible to come
to terms with the logic of this situation. We can understand old people dying. They've had a full
life and should not expect to
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