Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 64
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[Page 64]
The land for the most part is undulating and all the hills and valleys are intensely cultivated and every little farmlet has its old Dutch windmill. The same was delightfully rural and rustic and a rest for eyes that for days had gazed on nothing but masses of storm tossed sea.
Flores however is arid and rugged and the day we saw it we shall always remember as the wildest and stormiest in all the long Odyssey.
With the ships head turned south the weather soon moderated and the sun became warm. Scuttles were opened, exercise became possible, and everyone's spirits rose.
One's chief objection to rough weather is the impossibility of getting a respectable sleep rolls from side to side in the bunk the propellor races and possessions fall to the deck all night long.
Rumours, born no one knows where, that we were on our way home via Panama, became common in the ship and tho' no one really believed in them, yet they turned ones fancy highly towards a comfortable billet in Farm Cove and seemed to pass the time.
After a due interval the Sydney made Bermuda a chain of over a hundred islands ranging in size from about forty square miles to something much smaller than Garden Island.
This group lies in the Gulf stream 690 miles South East of New York and the place is a favourite winter haunt for such New Yorkers as are able to get away from the blizzards further North. The main group of islands lies in a sort of horse shoe and each is separated from its neighbour by a channel, often only a few feet wide, which is spanned by a bridge & one can ride a bicycle from one and to the other.