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relations and friends of friends - like relatives of Horace Horn in New Cross, London. Len, and
presumably Mr Ashworth, also had various business contacts to follow up and factories to see.
We know that Len had a letter of recommendation from the Burdekin merchants, Burns Philp,
introducing him to a London merchant in Fenchurch Street. Esther was entranced by the
scenery: green pastures, quaint old villages, ancient cathedrals and castles. She was thrilled to
see, and feel, snow, which she had never seen before.
With occasional breaks for recuperation the five Australians drove (presumably in a hired car)
from London to Inverness and Aberdeen, via the Lake District, Loch Lomond and Loch Ness.
And of course they visited the Scottish Ayr. They saw Blackburn and Blackpool, Ben Nevis
and Snowdon, Conway and Carnarvon Castles, Dover Castle and Stonehenge. They went to
Anglesey and only briefly into Cornwall as far as Camelford, from where, returning to Devon via
Launceston, they passed ten miles north of Calstock and Honeycombe House.
In London they toured Westminster Cathedral, St Paul's Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament,
the Tower of London, and saw the changing of the guard. They also went to the pictures -
Esther, it seems, liked the magic of the cinema -and she enjoyed comparing the prices of goods
with those back home. 'Wonderful', she writes several times, as well as 'Very wonderful'.
People were
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often 'very nice', though some were shockingly poor and dirty. Sometimes she felt quite tired.
On 17 July, Len and Esther left London by train for Paris. From there they went to Amiens and
toured the battlefields and memorials of the First World War, before returning to London. Paris
seems to have impressed her more than London, especially its imposing buildings: they visited
Notre Dame, Versailles, and the Eiffel Tower. The achievements of Louis XIV and Napoleon
also seized her imagination. 'They hated her1, she notes of Louis' wife. 'Called her witch.'
On 23 July, Esther sailed from Southampton on the liner Olympic. Len saw her off, and it seems
she travelled on her own, probably third class. She wrote less about the voyage home, but she
went to the ship's pictures, to concerts, attended church services, and apparently never went
ashore.
On 21 August 1930, the ship docked at Fremantle, arriving at Melbourne on the 28th. Soon
Esther was home - moving into her newly built house - and with what tales to tell! She had been
away from Ayr for all of six months, the most amazing of her life.
Len, meanwhile, had gone around the world - the first Honeycombe to do so. He had sailed
across the Atlantic to Canada, to meet a penfriend, a girl to whom another female penfriend had
prevailed on him to write. He returned to Ayr via Los Angeles and the Pacific. He had a letter
of introduction from the Texas Oil Company to see an oil refinery and an oil-field near LA.
What else he did, what pleasures he sought, what cities he saw, we do not know; but his
horizons had inevitably widened in more ways than one.
He returned quite happily and hopefully to Ayr in September 1930, to yet another girl, who
lived in Ravenswood, and to whom he had written regularly while he was away.
Len was something of a 'ladies man', according to his nephew, Lloyd - 'He had flair and
personality; he could make a woman feel like a million dollars.' Apart from an abundance of
energy, good humour and charm, Len was taller than average in those days (he was 5'8"), with
thick dark hair, a noble brow, a generous mouth, and pale blue eyes.
The Ravenswood recipient of his letters while he was overseas was Ethel Keller. The daughter
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