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there were always some improvements to be made: the roads were lit by electric street-lights in
1937, and the new Shire Hall, 'the finest in the West', was opened two years later, by which
time most of the town's roads had been bitumenised.
In 1938 Lawrie was 50. Then came the Second World War.
According to The Story of Cloncurry, at the first Council meeting after the war began, the
Council "expressed concern at the number of "foreigners", potential fifth columnists, in nearby
Mt Isa, and resolved to guard the water reservoir.' They were also worried about the possibility
of air-raids. But it was not until March 1942 that an air-raid shelter was built behind the Shire
Hall, in Scarr Street.
It was about this time that the Americans arrived. They further enlarged the facilities at the
aerodrome, which had been taken over by the RAAF - they extended the runway - and turned
the Shire Hall, which they commandeered, into a make-shift hospital. They moved out before
long into purpose-built accommodation as a fully-equipped air-base was established. Within a
year Flying Fortresses were setting out from Cloncurry to bomb Japanese positions in New
Guinea. In 1942, an American pilot spent a few days in Cloncurry after his plane made a forced
landing at Winton. His name was Lyndon Baines Johnson, and in November 1963 he would
succeed John Kennedy as President of the United States.
Lawrie continued to work on the railways during the war as a guard; and in 1940, when he was
52, he became enamoured of a widow, Amy Rees.
She was 10 years younger than Lawrie, and had been a widow for about five years; her
husband had worked for the Post Office as a linesman. For some time now she had been
courted by a grazier, Mr Ticehurst of Cabbaroo. One night, about 9.0 pm, Lawrie
Honeycombe knocked at her front door: he was on his way to work on a night shift and carried
his tucker box with him.
Mrs Rees had a daughter, Gwen, who was then 15, and as surprised as her mother at this
visitation so late at night. Nearly 50 years later she recalled what happened next. 'He liked my
mother, but was shy, you see, and he must have plucked up his courage to knock at the door.
She went to open it, and he said "Hallo" and she said "Hallo" and asked him if he would like to
come in. He said he would and she took him into the front room. He sat in a lounge chair with
his tucker box at his feet and didn't say another word. He wouldn't speak. They sat like that for
fifteen minutes and not a word was spoken! Then he said "I've got to go now.'" Gwen burst out
laughing. She had watched the whole scene all those years ago suppressing her giggles. 'At the
door he said: "Can I come back another time?" and mother said "If you'd like to." He was
lovely.'
The friendship blossomed. Mrs Rees was a laundrywoman for the railways: she did the washing
of dining-car linen and of the sheets and pillows from the sleepers. Lawrie sometimes helped
her. She never married him, however, or Mr Ticehurst, although it seems that if Lawrie had
been free, she
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might have become his wife. 'He wanted to marry her,' said Gwen. 'But first he had to find out
whether his first wife, Mrs Lily, was dead or alive. He never did. When he died, he gave her his
money - before he died. He never kept it in the Bank.'
Sugar's friendship with Amy Rees lasted over 20 years. In 1942 when a kidney illness put him in
the Cloncurry Hospital, which was also the Base Hospital for the Flying Doctors Service, she
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