Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 191
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[Page 191]
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commanders. In addition to arduous parades and company drills in the camp area, we went on long route-marches, day and night, around the Eastern and Southern Suburbs, to Vaucluse, Maroubra, Botany and Coogee, and even a short march to Hyde Park and back, behind our newly formed, and rather ragtime, brass band: a proud day that was, with crowds of people in Oxford St cheering us on, lining the footpaths or hanging out of upper-floor windows.
In due course, we had a very full day when every soldier fired the first shots through his new rifle on the old Randwick Range, five shots at each of the prescribed ranges. Other days and nights were spent on tactical exercises and skirmishing over the sandhills between Maroubra and Mascot.
One of our officers, Lieut Sid Cook was a son of the Minister for Defence, Sir Joseph Cook, who expressed a wish to meet his son's brother officers and see the battalion. Politicians were not allowed to intrude in Army routine activities in those days, and he had to meet the officers on the usual 8 a.m. parade, and then hurried away.
Towards the middle of September the whole Brigade of four battalions marched past the critical eye of the Brigade Commander Colonel McLaurin, and we were given a few days pre-embarkation leave, with free rail travel, to visit our homes and make our farewells. My appointment had just been confirmed as a second lieutenant, in the Commonwealth Gazette, in a batch of names, and the officers thus selected were issued with swords and sent en masse to Chorleys to be measured for the new field-service style of officer's uniform. We were granted special allowances to cover the cost of the uniforms and equipment, but the amounts we received were not nearly enough to reimburse us fully.
One late afternoon I went out to the Presbyterian Ladies College at Croydon, sword on hip, to say "Good Bye" to my eldest sister Rose, who was a boarder there. As we strolled in the grounds, many giggling girls were peeping through the curtains at this strange invasion of their man-less cloisters.
Nearly half of our nights were free of duty, lectures or night manoeuvres; leave was usually granted, then, by our Battalion