Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 321
Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 321]
158
previously: a common practice with retiring Indian Civil Servants; they found the colder climate of Britain unendurable after living for years in a warmer clime.
At Fremantle a big gang of shabbily dressed wharf labourers was waiting to unload some of the ship's cargo. I had been so used to seeing native coolies doing work of this kind, that I felt a bit shocked to see fellow Australians doing it. It reminded me very abruptly that I was now back in "White Australia". While the "Hymettus" was berthing in Port Phillip, Melbourne, a number of officers were pacing up and down the wharf: Naval Landing Officers: Military Landing Officers: Rail Transport Officers etc, etc. One called out to the Captain on bridge in a very authoritative voice, "Where are your troops?" whereupon the Captain leaned out and shouted to me on the deck below. "Hey Stewie, show yourself!" I obliged him, and he called back gleefully, "He is the troops". By the time the ship was tied up the brassards and brass-hats had all disappeared, except a junior medical officer with an ambulance and driver.
Once off the ship, I was taken straight out to the Heidelberg Military Hospital for final medical examination, demobilisation and the granting of three months paid leave with free railway travel all over the Commonwealth; after which I was free to go and stay with friends at Geelong for a week; there celebrating my twenty-fifth birthday and being measured for two civilian suits of clothes, to be sent on to me later.
I travelled back to Parkes on the overland railways, and for the second time received the customary civic welcome accorded to all returning soldiers, though I had really tried to arrive unheralded. I returned to "Rosedernate" to find my Father confined to the house with a bad leg and rather debilitated generally. He was also very worried about a severe drought that had been prolonged for a few months and showed no signs of ending. He had a few hundred sheep being hand-fed on a farm he had leased, four miles out on the Wellington Road. The dam on the place had dried up and water was being carted over a mile from the Billabong Creek, in two ships-tanks on a horse-drawn lorry.