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items like cakes and pies.
By such means she was able to stabilise her existence and in so doing proved to herself that she
had some business capabilities, sufficient to venture away from Charters Towers and realise her
husband's dying dream of setting up a shop near the new railway station in Ayr - which was
already linked to Townsville and would be connected by rail to Bowen in September 1913.
But before she moved both house and home, literally, to Ayr, she inspected the area for herself,
staying, at Arthur Rutherford's suggestion or invitation, at McDesme.
One of Arthur's five children, Ruth, who married grazier, Les Cox, in 1929 when she was 20,
told Esther's grandson, John, years later that after Bill died, Esther came down and stayed with
the Rutherfords while she assessed the Burdekin's prospects, before making a final decision to
settle in Ayr; Hugh Douglas, who couldn't read or write and was working on the farm at the
time, is said to have loaned her some money to start a business.
Hughie, who had been one of Bill's mates and had cut cane with him in 1909, admired Esther,
and is said to have wanted to marry her. How differently would have the future have been if she
had said 'Yes'.
But her mind was set on realising what Bill had probably discussed with her. She looked around
Ayr and no doubt examined what shops and stores were already there. She looked for a site
near the railway station, where passengers would need food and drink to sustain them on their
journeys; she looked for a place that wouldn't be flooded and which she could afford. She
found such a place - possibly with the benevolent help of Arthur Rutherford or
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other affluent friends - opposite overcrowded Ayr State School, which would supply customers
(teachers and children) for many years to come. It was a barren plot of land in Munro Street, at
the Railway Street end, a few hundred yards from the railway station and halfway between the
station and Queen Street.
Lot 121, in Allotment 9, Section 50, was sold to Mrs IME Honeycombe in Ayr on 18 February
1913. It consisted of one rood, eight perches of land (about a quarter of an acre) and its owner
Arthur Cox, a wealthy grazier, sold it to her for £60 - although the sum was not fully paid off for
eight months, until November.
With the help of one of her half-brothers, who was a carpenter, and probably aided by some of
Bill's mates (like Hughie Douglas), Esther transported her wood and corrugated iron home on a
bullock train from Mt Leyshon to Ayr, where it was reconstructed. A small wooden hut was
built beside it by her carpenter brother; she paid him off at £1 a week. And suddenly, there it
was -the first Honeycombe store in Queensland.
While that was happening, Esther and her four children may have lived briefly in a tent, as family
legend claims. This has been denied, however, by Alma, who also refuted another legend, that
Esther made meals, or pies, for railway workers. But John, Esther's grandson, said: 'I believe
she obtained work cooking for the railway gang, who were laying the line from Ayr to Bowen.
Townsville and Ayr were already connected. That's the line near where we live now. She made
bread and pies and sold them. That's how she got the idea of selling groceries also. She told me
she started the store with a £20 order for supplies from Burns Philp, who were merchants, and
she had to sell the articles before she could pay for them, because she didn't have £20.'
The idea of running a grocer's store must have been with Esther before she came to Ayr, as the
railway gang were temporary customers, their work being completed six months after she
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