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Club arcd«the local Anglican church.1 Alma said: 'John made all the arrangements. We couldn't
afford to bring Len back - it was very expensive in those days. We didn't have any ready
money, nor did Ethel. It was all in property.'
Len's ashes were interred in the crematorium at Townsville.
Ethel continued to visit New Zealand annually after Len's death, and often went far overseas.
With a friend she went on organised tours of Europe, to the Holy Land, to Greece, to the West
Indies and America. She was away from Queensland for four or five months every year. She
could afford it, as in 1975 she sold her share in the family business to John for half a million
dollars. Alma had already given John her quarter share, while retaining her house and receiving
an allowance. Honeycombes was now entirely his.
John himself would become a great traveller over the years, flying around the world on business
trips, usually accompanied by members of his family. His first trip out of Queensland had been
to Sydney in 1954, soon after his grandmother Esther died.
He first went overseas in March 1958, when he was 21, sailing second-class from Brisbane on
an Italian ship, the Roma, with an Italian friend, Peter Mattiuzzo, whose people had a small farm
northeast of Venice. After a month in Italy, John teamed up with Alma, who had flown to
Rome. In a hired car they drove across Europe to London and then, much as Len had done in
1930, they drove around Britain, visiting Ayr and Edinburgh among other places, and returning
to Australia (as Esther had done) on a boat that sailed from Marseilles. In Cornwall they got as
far as Mevagissey, Polperro and Looe.
As with Len, they were unaware of their Cornish origins and of Honeycombe House - although
John had been given some clues to both, when he telephoned, out of curiosity, the only
Honeycombe he found in the London directory.
This was Fred Honeycombe, who lived in north London, at Willesden, and whose wife had
died in a car accident the previous year. Fred, aged 52, told John about some vague inheritance
that had never been claimed; he associated it with Cornwall, whence his family had originated
and where there was some lost estate. Some years ago, in Ayr, Len had shown John an English
magazine which contained an item about the sale of the Honeycombe Estate. Now John was
agog - was there any such thing? But although he drove around Cornwall, he didn't know where
to look.
All that would change a few years later when I, then an out-of-work actor, wrote in 1964 to
most of the Honeycombes I found named in international telephone directories. Some
responded, and one of them was John. We were both 27 then.
391
Writing on 19 April to me, on a plane flying south to Brisbane, (where he was to see a specialist
about recurring attacks of malaria caught in Papua the previous year), he said: 'Naturally I was
interested to hear from you -Honeycombes seem rather rare specimens, that is there doesn't
seem to be many of them around.'
He went on to outline what he knew of his forebears, and it is interesting to note how after a few
generations names and facts can become confused. He wrote: 'My father's name was William
John. However his father and his father's father (my great-grandfather) were both John William.
The original John William is said to have come from Bristol, with two Brothers, one by name of
Robert I fancy. They went to Melbourne first. One ended up going to South Africa. (I think he
was a Doctor), the other went East to America. John William was a mining engineer and said to
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