Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 10]
6
contingent were massed on the forward well deck for prayers. "Off caps"! 500 caps were lifted from 500 heads and 1000 eyes looked up to where Commander Stevenson, O.C. HMAS "Berrima", stood prayer book in hand. There stood AB Z___ (who on the night prior to our departure from Sydney was as "tight as a bottle") with angelic face. Hard citizens these; able to stow away comfortably a gallon or two of Grog, but at Divisions on Sunday morning pious as a priest. Immediately after dismissing they swagger about, asking "Who the H__l shifted my pipe"? All the morning the "Sydney" has hung on our starboard quarter, volumes of smoke issuing from the 'midship funnels.
5 pm My eraser is not handy else would I expunge some lines written earlier in the day wherein I expatiated on the beautiful scenery. It is nothing to this. We are now (5.15 pm) just entering Whitsunday Passage. On either side are innumerable islands and the "Berrima" following in the wake of the "Sydney", who has now taken the lead, glides along a fairy waterway. One small island near the entrance particularly attracted my attention, the summit is one immense rock; and it is anything from 1000 to 1500 ft above sea level, the circumference of the whole island being probably under a mile & a half. At 5.30 we passed a lighthouse situated on the high foreshores of a huge island, the bungalow shaped houses of the attendants surrounded by waving palms giving a semi-tropical effect.
10.30 : Just turning in for an hour & a half; it is my watch on tonight & I must rise again at midnight. By the bye, as we have now passed the Tropic of Capricorn, we today went into whites which was very acceptable, the weather having been decidedly warm.
12.30 : A starlit sky & a smooth sea; the "Berrima" moves along almost silently. One feels that one could stand at the rail for hours watching