Featherston
9/7/16
Dear Folk,
Another Sunday is about to draw to a close and a bonny day it was up until about four this afternoon. It was a hard frost this morning & sharper than I have felt since coming here but this afternoon it dulled over & started to blow a very cold wind off the hills & looked like rain up until an hour ago but has cleared up again and from all appearances it will be another fine day tomorrow. After all the rain last week it is getting fine and dry again. I had another night on picket last had the middle shift from eleven till two and as I did not go to bed until half past nine I did not have much sleep but I think I can manage to be awake long enough to write a bit of a letter. Things are going on just the same as usual but latest report has it that we are to have the horses for eight weeks then another week at Papawai before final leave. If that comes off it will bring our leave up to the end of August but if as it is rumoured we are to get sixteen days it will not be so bad. Of course none of this has come out in orders so if it does not come off we need not be disappointed.
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I wonder if any of you went into Invercargill to see the Mounted section of the Fourteenth off I saw in the paper where the people were preparing a reception for them. It is also reported that they stayed three days in In’gill & if that is so it is a certainty that Lin would land at home for a little while anyway. They were very pleased to leave here the last few days they did not know what to do with themselves. I also received a letter from Kate the other day from Alexandria & from the way she speaks the Marama is on her way home but she that is Kate herself speaks of getting a transfer. By that I take it that she means to try and get into a hospital at some of the Base Camps. Last Tuesday I got a note from Nellie McIlwrick in Petone asking if there was any possibility of me seeing her & I am going to try & do so by going to Wellington next Saturday if I get the necessary leave. Have seen the nineteenth’s getting into harness and amongst them Ned Condon I knew he was to come up here but the day they arrived it had clean slipped my memory & I got quite a shock when I saw him. I also saw Jack Fletcher today he is in the seventeenth infantry & seems to be well on it, I think he is in some of the North Island companies. Jack Clark I have also seen two or three times
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By this time I suppose your Lady & Gentleman visitors will have moved on having enjoyed themselves very much. What a gay old spark Uncle is for his years it must be quite a few years since he was last at Rothie. Nearly everyone here is in bed or writing so things are very quiet one fellow is snoring away good and I will bet if he was wakened up he would declare he was not. One night sometime ago Kirkpatrick got out of bed & wakened him up to stop him & he nearly got his head bitten off I can tell you it sounded well in the middle of the night. There is no news about here nowadays so you will have to excuse my not writing. Tomorrow will see a change in our work as our squadron drill is over again for sometime and we are now going on to field work & that is much better the work is more open, and a little more speedy. Will have to bring this to a close now as I am both cold & sleepy. Hoping all are well as I am.
Ever Your Brother
Charlie
