Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 195
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[Page 195]
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to her wharf, finally to embark our Battalion on the 18th of October. There were few on the wharf to see us off, and we moved up the harbour and out through the Heads on a very windy showery Sunday afternoon.
The "Suffolk" having a long uninterrupted main deck, under cover, made an ideal troopship and accommodated our unit without any overcrowding. In the passenger accommodation, the officers were allocated three to a cabin, only the commanding officer having a cabin to himself. The other ranks slept in canvas hammocks suspended from hooks specially fixed in the "ceiling": these had to be rolled up neatly and properly stowed every morning.
Once at sea and steaming down the coast southwards in a heavy swell the ship began rolling and pitching, in the darkness, and many of the soldiers became pathetically sick. I was one of the fortunate ones that was not sick.
We proceeded independently, straight to Albany Sound near the south-west corner of West Australia, where a big convoy was being assembled. Some troopships from the other States, were already waiting at anchor when we arrived at the long jetty seven days later. A convoy of ten ships carrying the First Brigade Group of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force arrived the next morning.
Three days later all the transports had arrived, and one by one, in line ahead, they moved outside to take up their alloted stations: the Australians in three columns, each of eight, nine and ten ships respectively, with the New Zealanders immediately behind in two columns of five ships each. About four ship-lengths were maintained between bows and sterns, and three-quarters of a mile between the columns. The "Orvieto", which carried Divisional Headquarters, was in the van; the heavy cruiser H.M.S. "Minotaur" on the right-front; the Japanese battleship "Abouki" on the right rear and H.M.A.S. "Sydney" was on our left flank.
The "Suffolk" was nearly in the middle of the whole vast convoy, and to us, the sea all around as far as one could see