Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 163
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[Page 163]
81
On the eve of Easter 1913, we travelled by train to Liverpool for our first eight-day training camp with the rest of the Battalion, including remnants of the old volunteer regiment, still wearing their original uniforms with the green gorget patches and red piping. The Bathurst town band, which had often won the annual "B" Grade N.S.W. championship, was also our regimental band (still intact) and its music was most inspiring, particularly when rendering the regimental march, "The Lincolnshire Poacher", as it did when we marched out to the battalion parade.
After a few hot sunny days the camp (fully tented) was washed out by heavy rains, and the remainder of the period was abandoned. While on this visit to the Sydney area at Government expense, I took the opportunity of having a few days of rather extravagent holidays at the Steyne Hotel at Manly, before returning home to Parkes: this hotel has been completely rebuilt twice since then.
In 1912, for the first time, a Labour Party Government came into power in N.S.W., and financed by big loans raised in London, had embarked on an ambitious programme of new railway construction. It included three continuous sections of about thirty miles each, on the far North Coast, an extension from Wagga Wagga to Tumbarrumba, and five cross-connection unballasted sections in the wheat belt. For the Parkes to Peak Hill section, a construction depot was established on a spur-siding running off the existing light railway to Condobolin about three miles west of Parkes. It comprised a new four-roomed wooden cottage to serve as an office; dump areas for sleepers, rails and big timber; big lock-up sheds to house forage for Government horses; secure stores for the more valuable tools and materials; and a small blacksmith's shop.
Previously, railways and other big public constructions had been let to private contract, but corrupt practices had sometimes crept into this system, and unconscionable profits had been made. The Labour Party's policy was that all Public Works, in future, would be done by day-labour, employed and supervised by the Public Works Department, as the sole constructing authority