Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 395
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[Page 395]
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the stage by throw-downs cast from a section of the dress circle.
Another night the undergraduates association hired the new Prince Edward film theatre, where the first "talkie" film to be heard in Sydney was the star item. It was a short one featuring a talk by George Bernard Shaw about his meeting Mussolini the Italian dictator: I remember how I admired the perfect pronunciation and delivery of his English speech.
I now became interested in soldiering again, and joined the Corps of Australian Engineers, being appointed second-in-command of the 14th Field Company, which regularly paraded for training at the Engineer Depot in rear of the Royal Agricultural Society's showground, on Moore Park Road, together with two other field companies: shortly afterwards I was promoted to the command of this unit with the rank of Major. The compulsory trainees drafted to the Army engineers were mostly senior apprentices of all trades and very good types of young men. The Depot was well provided with drill halls, mess buildings, equipment stores and ample training facilities. Every Tuesday night was a parade night for officers and N.C.Os and full-unit parades were held on one Saturday afternoon a month. At Easter there was an annual camp of ten days at Liverpool or Holdsworthy in the hutted camps formerly used by the A.I.F. units.
This same year (1924) I attended my first "Waterloo" dinner, held by Army Engineer officers all over the British Empire on the Saturday night nearest to the actual date of the famous battle. Years afterwards, on a visit to Apsley House, the Duke of Wellington's London residence, I discovered that he had been accustomed to preside at a big dinner there every Waterloo anniversary, which was attended by surviving senior officers who were at the battle. We held ours at Adam's Hotel, in 1924.
To cater for the social side of students extra-curricula life at the University the several faculties took it in turn throughout the academic year to hold one or two dances in the Union Hall or the new Refectory. There was no rent to be paid for the hall, the women students, sisters or girl friends of