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of an accountant, who had once been an undertaker as well a Shire Clerk and Mines Secretary,
she had six brothers and five sisters. The Kellers had originated in Dublin, but both of Ethel's
grandmothers were German. She was 17 when she first met Len; he was 22. It was a year or
so before Alma's wedding, in 1929.
Rene and her police sergeant husband, Horace, happened to be stationed at the time in
Ravenswood, where the diminishing population (all the mines had closed down by the end of the
war) would eventually determine their removal as well. Rene used to attend the Kellers' church
and Horace played tennis with them. As Len's exertions in the Honeycombe business had
overtired him, it was decided, no doubt by his mother and sister, that he should have a change
of scene, a holiday - so why not go and stay in Ravenswood with his oldest sister, Rene? This
Len did, and met some of the Horns' young friends,
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including the Kellers, who made as much as they could of the social life that was left.
Ethel recalled: 'We went up to Rene and Horace one night for an evening round the piano:
Horace had quite a good voice. That was how we met, I think.' But it wasn't Ethel's singing that
caught Len's eye, it was the dashing figure she cut on the tennis-court, dressed in white and with
a fashionable Eton crop. Another story is that he first saw Ethel on a tennis-court.
On his return to Ayr, Len talked enthusiastically about the young girl he'd met who was such a
wonderful tennis player. Weekend visits to Ravenswood became usual after that, and Esther
went too. Ethel would sometimes visit Ayr with her family at the time of the Ayr Show. But by
1930 the decline of Ravenswood as a gold-mining town became terminal, and the railway line
closed. Although the Kellers moved to Home Hill, a dozen kilometers south of Ayr, in 1933, it
was not until the Second World War that anything came of Ethel's association with Len and they
were wed.
Bill, meanwhile, had returned to Ayr, to work for the family business. He and Zoe lived in a
house in Munro Street, like the other Honeycombes. It was not a good time for businesses. For
the collapse of national economies worldwide in the "Great Depression', launched by the Wall
Street crash in October 1929, was spreading. By 1931, 25% of the Australian workforce was
unemployed. In such difficult times the Honeycombes clung together for financial security and
mutual support.
Nonetheless, Len's visit to Europe and America had opened his eyes to modern business
methods and machinery, and had fired his ambition to be more than the manager of a small
country store. For Esther had tended to leave the running of the store to him as she aged,
although she and Alma were always included in any discussions about improvements,
customers, new stock and new ideas. The latter mainly came from Len, and after his lengthy trip
overseas, he was even more keen to exploit the store's potential, as well as any commercial
developments in Ayr connected with farming and the land. He had dreamed of being a farmer
when he was a child. So he had told his mother, when she asked him what he would like to be
when he grew up. He also had a great liking for horses, and looked after the few the family kept
- as well as the vegetable plot. He could remember the pleasure of riding on a horse in front of
his father when he was about four.
The first expansionist move in the family business was made in 1935, when Bill and Len sought,
and were granted, a John Deere franchise (they made and sold tractors). A machinery division
of Honeycombes was thus created which was run from the store, the tractors being housed in
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