Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 391
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[Page 391]
192
Molong. Early in the new year, I drove out there in the Hudson to spend about a week making several minor additions to the house that should make it more comfortable and convenient for the new tenant and his rather refined wife and three children.
At the beginning of my second year at the University, feeling more established and with my Saturday mornings free of attendance at the Technical College, I joined the Sports Union (fee £2-2-0d) and took up inter-faculty Rugby football and also rowing. The football was a knock-out competition. First, our Engineers team met and defeated the Law School lads, and then the Architects, who did not have a great number to select a team from and gave us an easy victory. But our third match was against Junior Medical, which we lost by a narrow margin, and we were out of the competition just as we were getting into good condition and combinations: I had been playing mostly as centre-forward.
So now I was able to devote all of my spare time to rowing, the season being a Winter one. Leaving the University sharp at 5 p.m. we had to catch a nearby tram to Glebe Point and walk a few blocks to the University boatshed at Blackwattle Bay. By the time we changed into rowing garb and got the boat on to the water, it was nearly dark, and quite dark before we finished an hour of instruction and rowing in the bay. There were a few big timber yards fronting the bay, and floating logs and baulks of timber were an ever-present risk of having the thin shells of the "fours" or "eights" holed. By the time we lifted the boat out of the water on to the pontoon, washed it down and replaced it in the shed, had a shower and got dressed again, it was getting on for 8 p.m. If I was quick, and lucky, I could catch a tram that got me to Sargents restaurant at Circular Quay just before no more customers were admitted. There, a very friendly young Scottish waitress promptly served me a massive mixed grill with all the trimmings - price 2/6d. Having demolished this, I boarded the ferry boat to Kirribilli Point, where I was now renting a room in a big old mansion, "Wyreepi", with well-grassed lawns running steeply down to the foreshore, alongside the ferry wharf. By the time I settled down to study my textbooks and do my