Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 115
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[Page 115]
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that I had, and at very fancy odds. "Give me back my fifteen shillings!" he cried, "And who told you about that horse?", he demanded to know. So I related how it happened. "Well I'll be dammed!", he wailed, "Your first time on a racecourse and you do better than I can, with all the information I've been given".
In the middle of 1909, my Father took me to Sydney to start me as a boarder at The Scots College, Bellevue Hill. I was wearing my first made-to-measure suit, and a pair of boots, hand-made by a Parkes craftsman, who worked alone in his little shop: the price was one pound, for man or boy. It was a very thrilling change for a lad not long turned fifteen years of age, the greatest one in my life, so far. For the first few days we both stayed at Farthing's New Occidental Hotel in Wynyard Square, and to me it seemed the greatest luxury imaginable.
The central city block was lighted with 110-Volt, direct current, electricity, generated by steam turbines at Pyrmont Power Station. As a result of my association with "Ikey" Chapman, I had become very technically-minded, with an almost obsessive interest in anything mechanical or electrical, so my first eager excursion, alone, was to walk over Pyrmont Bridge for a closer view of the power station, vainly hoping that I might be invited to see the inside. The inner city streets and parks were illuminated by powerful electric-arc lamps on top of tall ornamental iron standards. Everywhere else in the inner and outer suburbs, gas lamps were still the only means of lighting streets and buildings: even out at Point Piper and Bellevue Hill the so-called "Dress Circle" of Sydney.
Then on a sunny Winter's afternoon, Dad and I rode on an electric tram, swaying and bucking around the sharp curves, up narrow William St, through Kings Cross (very dull and respectable) down the hill and on to New South Head Rd, and finally to the foot of Victoria St, Bellevue Hill, up which we climbed, on foot, to keep our appointment for an interview with the Revd Arthur Ashworth Aspinall B.A. (Syd) the Principal of the Scots College, in his big book-lined study. He was a balding middle-aged man of medium height, whose round florid clean-shaven face