Part 01: Alan Fraser Fry letters, 8th August 1914- 28 January 1917 - Page 21
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[Page 21]
and let them know we are on the Coast. We tried to signal Cape Byron last night to get any news of the War – you cannot imagine how anxious we are to hear something – but we were too far out, and they evidently could not see our light, as they did not answer at all. We had a merry two or three minutes yesterday afternoon. The steering gear jammed, and we immediately drifted broadside on to the seas. I heard a crash all round me, and found that everything loose in the cabin had skidded across the room, even the drawers in my chest of drawers flew out and landed on the floor upsetting all the contents, and by judging by the sounds outside, all the other chests of drawers in the ship had done the same. This kept on for several minutes, me making frantic grabs at all I could lay hands on, the rest diving backwards and forwards across the room with every roll of the ship. At last they fixed up the steering gear, and her head was brought round to the wind. We are thinking how lucky we are that the engines are running all right now, it would'nt be too pleasant drifting for 3 days in this sea. We hope to get in about Friday sometime now.
Thursday, 24th September.
We have done better than we expected. The wind and sea went down fairly quickly, and we straight-way jumped up to about 7 ½ knots, with the result that we were off the Heads about 4 a.m. on Wednesday night, entering about 7 this morning. It was good to see Sydney Harbour again, and most of us I think, are glad to have escaped meeting any German warships. All we want to know now is – how the war has been getting on since 8th August, when the "Tambo" left Sydney.