Trooper to the Southern Cross

by Angela Mackail Thirkell

  TROOPER TO THE SOUTHERN CROSS

  ANGELA THIRKELL

  © Angela Thirkell 2016

  First published in 1934 by Faber and Faber.

  This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  1 – How I got with the Diggers

  2 – Horseferry Road Dragoons

  3 – Larry gives us the Dinkum Oil

  4 – Trouble in the Bath

  5 – The three-berth-cabin Joke

  6 – Andy gets his Bluff called

  7 – The Digger isn’t a bad Chap

  8 – Jerry hands it to the Colonel

  9 – The Rabbit’s Funeral

  10 – The Padre gives a helping Hand

  11 – Good old Aussie once more

  To S.C., G.T. and G.C.

  the cobbers who helped me see it through

  1 – How I got with the Diggers

  I have always wanted to write the story of the old ‘Rudolstadt’ which took a shipload of Australian troops home after the War, but there were so many reasons against it. At the time we were all very angry, because it isn’t a fair deal to put families on a troopship where there isn’t any discipline, and we had plenty of indignation meetings and made plans for a great exposure of the whole thing, but somehow when Fremantle came in sight and we smelt the old smell of the bush right out at sea, we began to feel different. What happened at Fremantle was pretty bad all the same and nearly put the lid on it, and we had plenty of time to nurse our grievances again, going across the Bight. They wouldn’t let us on shore at Adelaide because we had got such a bad name, and that made the diggers wild, though it was mostly their own fault. There was all sorts of talk about an armed guard to meet us at Melbourne and Sydney, but nothing was done, and all the bad eggs just went ashore and got demobilized quite peacefully. I expect some of them got their heads cracked in Melbourne when there was that rioting in the police strike, or at Sydney in the election rows. I have seen some pretty hard cases in my time — you don’t see Egypt and Gallipoli and France with your drawing-room manners on — but these coots beat the band.

  But when we really set foot on dear old Aussie again, we didn’t much care what had happened on the voyage, and it is surprising how things that seemed important on a ship don’t seem important on land. Also the other way round. When you are at sea all the little worries on shore don’t seem to count at all. Before I left Sydney in 1914 I was worried to death because another fellow was chasing round after my girl, but the moment I got on the troopship all my worries seemed to drop off. Any worrying that had to be done was about other things.

  We thought we were leaving Sydney to go straight to the War, but we had to go round by Hobart to pick up some of the Tasmanian lot. Coming round the west coast of Tassie we ran into really bad weather. Perhaps you know what the west coast is like. There is only one good harbour, Strahan, and that has a bar that will lift most ships out of the water. After that there’s nothing till you get round to Burnie. Miles and miles of those cliffs they call organ-pipes, great rocks like pillars. If you get wrecked on them, you haven’t a dog’s chance. A hundred to one you are broken to pieces by the great southwestern rollers that come booming up against the cliffs. If you have the hundredth lucky chance and do get ashore, you’ll probably wish you hadn’t. The bush is as thick as a bamboo clump, and there are great patches of horizontal scrub, a thing I never believed in till I saw it, and probably you won’t believe in it either. It grows so close together that you can hardly force a way through, and then about twenty feet from the ground it sort of bends over and lies along in a sort of plaited roof. You can get along the top of it, but it is slow going, and if you fall through it is the dickens of a job to get up again. So what with mountains and gullies and nothing particular to eat and the thick bush where you can get lost within a hundred yards of your camp, the chances are all against you. That’s why the escaped convicts used to eat each other — there wasn’t anything else. Why, it’s only a matter of eighty miles or so from little Hobart to Port Davey, but very few men have ever been across that bit of country. My old grand-dad did it once, and when he had had one too many he’d talk about it for hours. Perhaps in a hundred years or so they’ll have a road like the one by Lake St Clair to Queenstown, and petrol stations and cars going through all the time — perhaps they won’t. Not if Labor goes on monkeying about with the government, anyway. Why, it would take about fifty years and fifty millions to build that road on a forty-hour week at the present rate of wages — and probably it will be a thirty-hour week by then if the Japanese haven’t eaten us all. It seemed funny to me when I got to England and saw it all so neat and tidy to think of a little island only half the size being still unexplored. Well, explorers need something to do, and they would certainly get some kick out of little Tassie.

  So this gives you some idea what kind of coast we were going along. Wind and rain all the time, water everywhere. The ship made twenty-three knots in twenty-four hours the second day out and most of the diggers were as sick as cats. We couldn’t get much to eat either, because the cooks were as bad as the rest,-and all the crockery was flying about, and the galley fires — the old ‘Bendigo’ was a small old-fashioned boat — were out. But the Major and I scrounged round and managed to get some tins of biscuits, and we put the fear of the Lord into one of the cooks and got some tea made. Gosh, those poor fellows were glad to get it. There was a great big fellow called Tiny Spargo, a bit of a lad he was and always ready for a scrap, and there he lay, looking green and grey and yellow and any colour you like to name.

  ‘Brought the rum ration, Skipper?’ said he with a kind of sickly grin.

  ‘No,’ said I, ‘tea and biscuit, old man.’

  ‘Christ!’ said Tiny, ‘but you’ve got to get something down if you want to bring it up, so let’s have a go.’

  I left him there and went to look at a man who had broken a rib falling down the companion way. I got a captain’s rank from the jump, because I was with the Meds, and sometimes the diggers called me Skipper and sometimes Doc, but I answered to anything.

  Well, anyway, I came back a bit later, after I’d strapped up the man, Les Holt it was, a stocky little fellow who stopped one in the early days of the Canal fighting, and there was old Tiny, still all green and grey and yellow, with an empty plate by him.

  ‘Biscuit done you good?’ I asked.

  ‘My oath,’ said Tiny, ‘once down and once up, Doc.’

  ‘Did you drink the tea?’ said I.

  ‘Have a heart, Doc,’ said Tiny, looking greyer than ever, ‘my stomach isn’t too good. But it isn’t wasted, I fed it to the ship’s cat. Look, there’s the old bastard as pleased as sin.’

  And there was the cat having a nice drink of tea in the cup. The diggers loved that cat, and when we got to Port Said one of them pinched it, so that it would see life, but it got away and we never saw it again.

  After three days we got round the west coast and the sun came out and the diggers got up on deck, and all was peace. They had a two-up school which of course was strictly against orders, but if the major chose to wink at it, it wasn’t the doctor’s business. And some of them had a game of housey-housey, and some of them sang very well, and they’d have singsongs going on half the day. So when we had collected a few more from Adelaide, we got away across the Bight. All this isn’t actually part of my story, but it all goes to show what I was saying, that you forget your worries at sea quicker than anywhere.

  You don’t want to hear about the fighting on the Canal, where the worst misfortune I had was when my horse put his foot into a hole on the Turkish side, and the hole was all full of a Johnny Turk who had been buried
long enough to be pretty far gone. Talk of an escape of gas! All that Canal bit has been written about by real writers. Some of them were good on the job and some weren’t. Mind, I haven’t a word to say against newspaper men. We’ve all got to live somehow, and I’ve had some good pals among them, but some of these war correspondents fairly get me wild. I’m not going to mention names, because I don’t know any law — the King’s Regulations are all I know, and I know them backwards, and many a tight place they’ve got me out of — and I don’t want to know any lawyers, and libel actions aren’t any good to me, but any of you that were in Australia at the time the Prince of Wales came out will know what I mean.

  So I’ll leave all the War to correspondents, and missing out Gaba Tepe and the happy days in France, I will go on to the Armistice. There was one experience I had in France though that I’ll never forget as long as I live. Somewhere round Pozieres it was, and the diggers had had a good long spell of it, and when we got into a little village that wasn’t quite in ruins they fairly pulled the place down to get something to eat. By the time I got there with my field ambulance there wasn’t a crumb left in the place. I’d given my emergency rations to a kid we found yowling by the road, so I sent my batman — Ginger Kong his name was, half a Chink, but one of the best — to scrounge something for me. He was a good time gone, long enough for me to have a good long think about a nice thick beef steak with plenty of tomato or Worcestershire sauce, and scones with plenty of butter and jam, and a great big cup of tea, and I came nearer crying then than I ever have since I put my money on the wrong horse for the Cup in nineteen twelve. Well, presently back he came, looking as proud as you please. And what do you think he’d found? A pot of pate de foie gras and half a bottle of Benedictine. I ask you! Well, I had to get it down somehow. I didn’t want to hurt poor old Ginger’s feelings, but it was a hell of a breakfast. I hope I’ll never go through an experience like that again as long as I live.

  Still you mustn’t think I’m grousing. The War held many a bright moment even for the diggers so far away from good old Aussie. For instance, there was the day the diggers got wild with the English A.P.M. and somehow lost him in the canal. I did my best with artificial respiration, but the bugger had me beat. We had one of the best laughs over that we’d had for many a long day. The A.P.M.’s weren’t any too popular with our boys. They didn’t seem to understand, and our boys are pretty sensitive. If I wanted a job done I’d pick on a good man and say: ‘See here, old man, there’s six or seven of the boys lying on stretchers there, and they’re for it, I can tell you. Pass the word round to your cobbers not to wake the poor chaps, and if any of you want a bit of medical comforts, you know where to come.’ Well, they’d be as quiet as babies all night, and perhaps they’d give the ambulance an extra clean up for me if my men were dead beat, as they usually were, for they were great workers. You need never have any difficulty with our boys if you knew how to handle them. But the English A.P.M.’s used to come blustering along, getting the boys’ backs up. The boys didn’t like it, and they’d just say, quite naturally: ‘Aw, get along to hell, you bloody sod.’ Well, it was after that the A.P.M. got lost in the canal, so you can’t blame the diggers.

  My people have a sheep station away up in the Western District, not a big one, but enough to live on. Dad’s grandfather had taken up land sometime in the fifties, and he made a good thing out of it. Dad’s father was a bit of a lad as far as I can make out — I don’t remember him well because he died when I was just a kid. He wasn’t tight that time; no he was just riding after some sheep quite peacefully, when his horse stumbled on one of those little volcanic rocks that stick out of those parts — they say all the Western District was volcanic way back in history — and grand-dad got his neck broken. It was a pity, because she was a good little mare, and after she’d broken her knees she wasn’t ever quite the same. So then Dad carried on. Times weren’t too good, and he has had to sell land now and again, but he still keeps going, though what with taxes and the shearers’ wages and one thing and another, there isn’t much to it.

  My brothers took up some land further up country, and my sister married a mining engineer and goes all over the place with him, as they haven’t any kiddies. But I never fancied the station life somehow. I dare say I got it from the Mater. She is partly English, her father was an English doctor who married one of the Mallards, fruit-growing people up in the Riverina, and though the Mater had never been to England, she seemed to have those kind of ideas. She was a great little woman, the Mater. I’ve seen her cooking for twenty shearers all the shearing season when she couldn’t get help. And cooking means cooking with those fellows. A couple of sheep a day we’d kill then. The Mater would be up bright and early, getting tea for the men. Then there were chops for breakfast and plenty of tea. Then she would clean up a bit and put the joints in the ovens for dinner while she got them morning tea. We usually had the legs of mutton for dinner and the shoulders for tea, or sometimes the other way about, or sometimes she would cook the lot at once and have cold meat for tea, but the shearers would walk out on you as likely as not if they didn’t get a hot tea. Then there would be afternoon tea for the men, and then for tea there would be a great spread with the mutton and plenty of potatoes and tomato sauce and lots of the Mater’s scones and perhaps three or four big fruit pies or big jam tarts and the cheese and plenty of good strong tea. About nine o’clock we’d all have a cup of tea and be ready enough to turn in. Many’s the time I’ve sat in the kitchen watching the Mater peel the potatoes, or heard her in the kitchen after we were all in bed, making scones or pastry for next day, thinking what a grand little woman she was. Dad thinks the same. He thought the world of her. Whatever time he came in, she’d always have a nice hot meal for him, and always shine his shoes if he was going into town to the store. Dad is one of the most hospitable men I know, and he’ll never think it too late to bring a pal in for a drink or a yarn. When we were kiddies we used to have bets on what he would say when he came in, because it was always one of two things. ‘What about a cup of tea and some of Mother’s pie?’ or ‘What about cooking us a chop, old girl, and a nice cup of tea?’ He’s a great chap, the old man. I haven’t seen him since 1911, because my grandfather — the Mater’s father — left me a little money, and I decided to go to Sydney and do medicine, and then the War came, and somehow I’ve never been down to the old place since. The Mater died while the War was on. I daresay Jim and Arthur being killed had something to do with it. It was tough luck, but still Tom and Les are left, and Sis looks in from time to time, and Harry, the one that lost an arm, helps Dad on the station, so there’s nothing to complain about. I manage pretty well in Sydney with my brass plate on the door, and though we haven’t any kids we rub along all right.

  The Mater used to write to some of her English relations. There was a Mrs French who was her cousin, and the two corresponded pretty regularly. This Mrs French was a widow and lived somewhere in London, and had a kiddy called Celia. So when I wrote to the Mater to say that I had joined the R.A.A.M.C. in Sydney and might be going to England any time, she told me to be sure to go and see Aunt Mary any time I was in London. I didn’t see much sense in writing to Aunt Mary from Gallipoli, as I was more likely to be visiting the other side of Jordan than a widowed aunt in London, but when we got to France I did write. Aunt Mary wrote back a nice long letter full of news all about a lot of relations I’d never heard of, and said I must come and see them on my next leave. I must say one doesn’t expect very much from aunts, but I thought Aunt Mary wasn’t as enthusiastic as she might be about the brave nephew come to defend the old country and the rest of it. But anyway I forgot about it and lost Aunt Mary’s letter with the address. Then I heard about the Mater’s death and that shook me up a bit, and then my girl in Sydney wrote to say she was marrying Dick Parsons, who was on a newspaper and busy defending the Empire on the Australian front, so things were all pretty black.

  I never thought Irene would let me down like that, but she did.
I was pretty sore at the time, for I’d spent a lot of my pay on sending her presents and I’d even written a poem to her. It was lost with some of my kit in the big push before the Armistice, but it was a bit on the lines of some of the stuff in C. J. Dennis’

  ‘Sentimental Bloke’. Funny, if you come to think of it, his girl being called Doreen and mine Irene. I did think of copying out one of his poems and putting Irene instead of Doreen, as they rhyme, but I was afraid Irene might spot it, as she has quite a literary bent. However, it turned out to be the best day’s work she ever did for me, so I don’t bear her a grudge.

  Well, naturally, things being so black, I spent my leaves in Paris and never thought of Auntie again. Paris is all right, but give me Sydney every time, or even Melbourne. Paris doesn’t have the same homey feeling.

  I had got my majority before the Armistice, and a friend I had at H.Q. put me wise about what to do next. He said some would be lucky enough to get sent home at once, but a lot would get stuck in England or France, and the best thing I could do was to apply under the Non-Military Employment Scheme. I went into it with him and it sounded a bonzer business. You got indefinite leave, on pay, to learn up your special subject, and our fellows were going for it bald-headed. Doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, wool-mill owners, chemists, all sorts and kinds, it was the chance of their lives. They did say that old Colonel Rosenheim, the one that was one of the biggest crooks on the Randwick racecourse, got a job with some English bookies, but they couldn’t teach him anything. But I can’t say for certain. It was one of the best schemes the A.I.F. ever put up, and I was lucky to get in early on it. I had met one of your big English surgeons at a base hospital in France where we were short-handed, and we chummed up, and he told me to let him know if ever I wanted a job. So I wrote to him and he offered me a research job under him in his own hospital. It was my own special line of work, head operations mostly, and I jumped at it. So my pal at H.Q. wangled the thing for me, and there I was, on major’s pay, and you know the Australian pay was a lot better than the English, doing the job of my heart with a man I liked. Luckily there were plenty of bad head wounds, so I was hard at it, learning every day and reading up the newest stuff most nights. I might go out with a pal now and again, but I stuck pretty close to work.