Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 193
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[Page 193]
96
Commander, to go into the city to visit friends and relatives, or join them at merry dinners in popular grill-rooms: Farmers upstairs restaurant was the fashionable place to go.
All this time the troopships were being prepared and victualled under Navy auspices, and the morning of the 22nd September was fixed as the embarkation time. The whole of our battalion was to completely fill the S.S. "Suffolk" (troopship A 10) a ten thousand tons cargo ship of the old Federal Houldershire Line, with limited passenger accommodation. The day before embarkation date she was brought in to one of the Woolloomooloo wharves, and for security reasons, I was sent aboard her with an officer's guard of twenty four other ranks, and Mother came down to say goodbye on the wharf. She had been staying at the Hotel Arcadia for over a week and had been visiting me at the camp, almost daily, after parade hours. Mrs F.W. Gibson of "Plevna" and her daughter Madge (Alan's future mother) were also staying at the same hotel and visiting me sometimes with Mother.
Next morning, the troops, already marching down to their troopships, were turned back to camp at almost the last minute, because of an alarm from Naval Intelligence that Admiral Von Spee's German Pacific Fleet was on the loose somewhere in the South Pacific, and had not been contacted by H.M.A.S. "Australia" and her escorting cruisers. At dawn the next morning the "Suffolk" moved out to an anchorage in Athol Bight with my men and me on board, to post sentries at vital stations and remain on the ship until further orders. I lived in luxury with the ship's officers. The Captain and the Chief Engineer entertained me in their cabins, and the Doctor took a special interest in me: he had observed me farewelling Mother on the wharf; she had a slim girlish figure and looked very young for her age, and all through the voyage he insisted that she was my girl friend, despite my denials.
Back in camp at Kensington, the troops continued their training, and when our Navy had chased Von Spee's squadron away over to the South American coast, the "Suffolk" returned