Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 319
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[Page 319]
157
wallahs) in the large, cool, stone railway refreshment rooms at which we frequently stopped, and also the shower-bath the hot carriages got from a large overhead perforated pipe running the full length of the train. The Montague-Chelmsford Act had only recently been passed in the British Parliament, giving the Indians their first step towards independence, and it was noticeable that railway porters and hotel servants were already assuming an air of arrogance towards the British Sahibs.
Two humid days in Calcutta, which seemed a much more colonial city than Bombay, and I embarked on the S.S. "Hymettus" the small ship that had been in front of the "Suffolk" in the big Australian convoy, and now no longer a troopship, but the very first civilian passenger ship to leave India for Australia: I was the only soldier on her. We passed down the Huglie [also spelt Hugli or Hooghly] River, steamed across the Bay of Bengal to Rangoon in Burma and then on to Singapore for two days, before passing through the Sunda Straits and down the West Coast of Australia to Fremantle at the beginning of April.
Later in the morning on which we left Singapore, early, the ship was running down the eastern coast of Sumatra, the white beaches of which were clearly visible to the naked eye, when smoke was detected coming from one of the forward hatches. The ship was immediately turned about to run with the wind and to thus minimise draught. The holds were crammed full of bales of jute grain sacks and woolpacks loaded at Calcutta, products very likely to break into spontaneous combustion under heavy pressure, especially if damp. The hatch was quickly removed and a score of bales thrown overboard until the smouldering ones were exposed and jettisoned too. After this rather alarming incident we completed the rest of the voyage without any untoward happenings.
Among the passengers, rather a mixed bag, was a very cultured retired civil engineer with his wife and a young daughter. They spent most of their life in India and were now on their way to the usual apple orchard in Tasmania, bought some years