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The marriage did not last long. The Dunwich Asylum's invaluable form of admission records
what happened to William's second wife over the next 22 years - evidently in her own words.
It says, beside the sub-heading History - 'Came to Melbourne in 1851 as a poor immigrant.
Remained in Melbourne three or four years and married there. Left Melbourne on account of ill
health and went to Tasmania for two or three years. Then came to Sydney and afterwards to
Queensland. I kept a school in Ipswich for some time and then engaged as teacher at Mr
Conneli's Station. Stayed there two years, and then returned to Ipswich. Have maintained
myself up to the last three months' - that is, until she was admitted to the Asylum in February
1869 suffering from debility.
What untold toil, travails and tough travelling and teaching around Australia underlie that simple
account!
Why did she leave William? Or did he abandon her? She bore him no children, and perhaps her
role as a surrogate mother was soon played out and the marriage seen to be a mistake. At any
rate, after a few years - possibly in 1854 and 'on account of ill health' - she went to Tasmania,
calling herself Mrs Honeycombe and claiming, if not then but certainly later that her husband
'died at Ballaraf.
He didn't of course, and very probably she and William were in fact never divorced. But why
say that he died at Ballarat, unless he went gold-mining there and indicated that he never wished
to see her again? The 20 minute battle of the Eureka Stockade, in which 28 gold-miners,
soldiers and policeman died, happened in Ballarat on Sunday 3 December 1854. Did Elizabeth,
as a middle-aged teacher, romanticise her alleged widowhood by claiming that her husband died
in Ballarat in a mining accident - or even at the Eureka Stockade?
It is more than likely that William did become a gold prospector, for a while. For when he
married the 'poor immigrant', Elizabeth Hicks, in September 1851, the'Yellow-fever', as the
Argus called it, was at its peak, the town in a turmoil, prices haywire, and many shops, farms,
houses, businesses, factories, surgeries, ships and even churches empty of men. Victoria now
had its own gold-fields, near Clunes and Bailarat, and in December gold was found at Bendigo.
Back in 1850, when the Honeycombes came to Melbourne, two matters of general concern
were in the minds and conversations of its citizens. One was convict transportation; the other
was the establishment of the Port Phillip district as a separate colony.
Transportation to New South Wales (and to the rest of the Australian continent) had ended in
1840. although convicts continued to be sent to Norfolk Island and Van Diemen's Land. But in
1849 the British Government tried to revive the system under a new guise - prisoners would
serve some of their
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sentence in Britain (in jail and engaged on public works) and the rest 'in exile' -and four ships full
of 'exiles' were sent to New South Wales. They were met by outrage and demonstrations.
For several years the colony had been trying to forget its penal origins and elevate its social and
political status. Since 1832, subsidised or assisted immigration had provided a steadily
increasing flow of cheap labour and settlers, and convict labour was less required. It was much
needed, however, in the struggling settlements in Western Australia, founded in 1829 by two
naval captains, Charles Frernantle and James Stirling, and in 1850 Western Australia began
receiving the sweepings of British jails, continuing to do so until January 1868.
Anti-transportation agitation continued in the east throughout 1850, with much lobbying, and
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