Author(s): Kathy Duncombe (Adapted by); Paul Thost (Translator)

Tasmaniana

Fritz Stegherr born in Germany in 1888 to a single mother, raised in the Algäu, always wanted to go to sea as a teenager. At 26, he found himself in a foreign country on the other side of the world when England declared war on Germany in 1914. He was the 4th Officer on the S. S. Oberhausen, a cargo steamer in Port Huon Tasmania, loading railway sleepers for Durban in South Africa, when news of the war filtered down and soon after Naval Reservists were sent from Hobart to seize the ship and arrest the crew. He spent the entire war in Prison of War Camps in Tasmania, and New South Wales, and wrote five diaries for his dear mother who requested he write down memories.This is the translated diary that Fritz Stegherr wrote while interned in Hobart, and Bruny Island, Tasmania between 1914 and 1915.This is only the beginning of his story...