Marsh letter diary, 14 January-2 March 1917 / Henry James Marsh - Page 14

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[Page 14]

seem to be very jealous of the Australians especially when they see us walking along with their girls, their were no fights between us. There are a terrible lot of private hotels in Durban. The rickshaws are just the same as sulkies, drawn by natives, and they dress up in all kinds of dress. They travel very fast, and they get up to some funny capers. Mostly all have bullocks horns on them, there are not many motor cars here, and taking it all round is a very slow town compared to Brisbane.

The Botanical Gardens are very pretty, the eating plums are very nice. The natives try to get us to buy everything, but we no savee. Mostly all the labour is done by blacks but the Government jobs are half white and black. There are some very fine powerful tugs in the Harbour. We were glad to get a paper and see some news, I saw by this evening news that there is a German raider abroad again, and doing great havoc in the shipping etc. The sister ship to this one had nurses on board from Queensland, but we left her still in Durban, we have 4 nurses on board now, they came on board at Durban from the "Thermosthenes".

The docks are dirt and black coal dust everywhere, one gets dirty very quick, I am going for a bath now to try and get cool. The sea is nice and calm again. I believe at Capetown we get a gun fixed on the stern and there are 5 troopships waiting for us there, also the convoys, the worst part of the trip comes from there until we arrive in England. The prisoners (native) are marched to work every morning on the breakwater by the warders

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