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In doing so they linked the family's future to its past. For the only other place in the world called
Honeycombe is the house in Cornwall where Honeycombes lived seven centuries ago. That
house gave its name to the family who lived there then, and now, many generations later, the
family's name was given to a street, a hyphen of land on the other side of the world.
So a line was drawn between two dots, a fragile faint uncertain line that invisibly flowed from
John via Bill and Zoe, Esther and Will, John and Mary, to William and Elizabeth, and connected
them all to their misty Cornish ancestors, who knew nothing of Australia, nor of what their
children's children would see and know and do in another country so very far away.
Although we glimpse their yesterdays, and record and remember some of our own, we see
ahead no better than they. We only know that life goes on, the line goes on - but whither? And
who will stand on an alien shore a hundred years from now, as William did, and wonder what
the next few years will bring?
when she went to live with Bill and Gwen in Katoomba and where she went to school.
Katoomba is in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, and Bill is said to have lived in adjacent
Leura before settling in Katoomba, where he worked for a dentist called Kelvin Hutchinson,
who ten years later would describe Bill in a handwritten reference as 'by far the best dental
mechanic 1 have had the pleasure to be associated with.' Bill had no hobbies, but he developed
a sideline of fashioning jewellery, of cutting and polishing stones. Gwen also had a job: she was
the manager of a dress salon and drapery shop.
Although Pam, and probably others in NSW, were led to believe that Gwen and Bill had
married, Zoe refused to agree to a divorce. It wasn't until 1961, when the divorce laws
changed, that Bill was able to file for divorce, conceding that he would pay Zoe £8 a week, as
well as Lloyd's education, any medical bills, the rates, and provide her with a home (their Munro
Street house).
Bill and Gwen eventually married in March 1962; he was 58.
Back in Ayr, Esther's health was fading: she was 70 in October 1949, and in that year she
moved in with Alma and Lloyd Wilson and lived with them until she died.
After Bill's departure, Len became the overall manager of the machinery side of the business,
and Alma ran the grocery store. Although Len, 43 in 1949, had ideas about expanding the
business - he opened a machinery outlet in Home Hill - any major developments would have to
wait until his mother died; age had made her averse to too much change.
The Home Hill shop was run by two of Ethel's married brothers. One of them, Len Keller, was
a tractor mechanic; the other, Fort, managed the shop until he returned to Ayr, where he
eventually managed the BP Depot. A sister, Myrtle, took over her father's accountancy practice
in Home Hill and was the pianist for the Home Hill Choir.
Len's energies outside the business were devoted to church affairs and charities, to horse-
breeding and the growing of roses and colourful annuals in the garden at Rossiter's Hill. In the
last two pursuits he was assisted by Eddy Powell, who lived in a small house at the back. Every
year Len travelled with Ethel to New Zealand, to look at horses at yearling sales. He told young
Lloyd that one day he'd retire and breed horses and leave the grocery and machinery businesses
to be run by John and Lloyd.
Both boys, when not at school, were co-opted to work for the Honeycombes. Lloyd's
induction in the business began when he was about seven (in 1951).
He said later: 'I remember working on the grocery side initially because they wouldn't trust me
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