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Two years after Richard and his family left Liverpool, his fourth child, Emma, was born, on 16
May 1855. She was the first Honeycombe to be born in Australia. Her mother, Elizabeth,
registered the birth, giving her address as
'South Geelong', and her husband's occupation as 'mason'. Emma never married, and died in
Melbourne in 1876 at the age of 21.
Emma was not one year old when her aunt, Jane Honeycombe, Richard's older sister and the
last of William's family to emigrate, left England on her own.
111
ssen any of his three grand-children. He had certainly never seen his grandson, George.
The reunion must have been charged with some emotion and there would have been much to
talk about.
How was the voyage and how was England? How were Mary Ann and Jane? What had
happened to William Robert? Was Jane planning to venture here? And what was this war
between Russia and Turkey? And the Duke of Wellington was dead, and another Napoleon
was Emperor of France! And the Crystal Palace was being rebuilt in south London! How was it
all back home?
How was it here? Richard would ask. What was it like?
He would have looked about and gone on looking and asking about jobs and prices, about
Geelong, Melbourne and Victoria. And so this was Henry! Martha and John! How they had
changed! And where was his stepmother, whom his father had married in September 1851?
Gone to Tasmania! And his own mother - how had she died? And little Elizabeth had got
married! Without even going to Gretna Green!
We know that Richard and his family were living in South Geelong in 1855. So they may have
rented rooms or a simple house there, somewhere around Foster and Fyans Streets, on the
slope leading down to the River Barwon.
William is recorded as having been in Noble Street in 1854, a long new street leading west from
La Trobe Terrace, in an area called Chiiweil. He may have been there in 1853. The land,
owned by a sheep-farming magnate called James Austin, had been divided up and sold as small
building lots in 1849, costing £5 to £10. Over 100 assorted buildings were put up within a year.
William may have occupied one of these houses, or built his own on a vacant lot.
There was a newly built Wesleyan Church in Noble Street, which in 1853 was being enlarged.
Another church, St Paul's, a large Anglican church begun in 1850, was still unfinished. Perhaps
William worked on one or the other. Or on St Peter's in Chiiweil, in Percy St, completed in
1855.
But there was more than enough work for stonemasons like William and Richard, who had
practical experience of the more monumental aspects of their craft. More churches had yet to
be built or rebuilt, as well as banks, municipal buildings, and the solid stone mansions of those
enriched by commerce, wool or gold. The second half of the 1850s was one of the best and
busiest times to be in Geelong. Business and building were booming. A visitor from Sydney
complained that there was 'nothing at all to break the dreadful monotony of buying and selling,
selling and buying from morning to night, every day and all day long.'
Richard's family possibly lodged with his father for a few weeks or months. But neither father
nor son would have been too happy with that. Nonetheless, William, now 56, must have been
pleased to see his second son - now a fit though short young man, sharp-nosed, keen-eyed, his
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