1. Arrival in Australia

 
“Mia Mia”
Esplanade,
Hampton
22.5.1916

Dear Bert,
This is just a short account of my wanderings from the time I left England in July 1913.
Well, we arrived in Sydney with our new Fleet Unit on October 4th 1913, as you know I was then in the Flagship “Australia” it was a great day and a fine sight to see us slowly making the beautiful Sydney Harbour. After we had “shown” the ships for a while we proceeded to South Australia and Tasmania for “Gunnery and Torpedo trials and exercises”. We spent Christmas 1913 in Hobart, Tasmania, and then we went to Adelaide, S.A. to “show ship”, we lay about 4 miles off “Glenelg”, South Australia’s fashionable watering place, where we had a real nice time. From S Australia we proceeded to Melbourne, which is in Port Phillip Bay; it was getting very near to winter (March) and the weather was getting very bad, visitors could not get on board our ship as it was dangerous to approach her, anyway, Jim was lucky enough to get aboard and he witnessed “away lifeboat”, one of the lads tried to swim to the ship but got into difficulties; he was “drunk” (”shicker”).

Image of the arrival of the first Royal Australian Navy, Oct 1913 By State Library of New South Wales from Australia, via Wikimedia Commons
Image of Sydney Heads from the Powerhouse Museum Collection