First Blog

I am afraid that this is my first blog (first anywhere, ever) so I'll keep it brief.
I am fascinated by the interest in Vasco that is beginning to appear on the web. As an interesting exercise see what sort of 'web foot print' Vasco's commanding officer, Major Robert Johnstone Donaldson, has as compared to Vasco, the humble 'other ranker'.
Very curious about the extent of Vasco's legacy, with the distinctive 'VASCO' signature, that may be out there. Are there anymore beyond Tamar and Geoff?
As Geoff has indicated, I am off on a Vasco trail through the US/France/UK within the next month or so. My research on Vasco stems from a previous interest in his neice, the educationalist and founder of HTANSW, Renee Erdos.
Very best wishes, Geoff, with health issues.
And thank you for starting the Vasco club.

Vasco Club News

After some weeks (months?) of recuperation, I am feeling much improved and may well be overcoming the lingering effects of the chemotherapy which drove away my nasty lymphoma. It is strange that it should take longer to recover from the treatment than it took to kill the disease.

Paul Kiem, after being busy preparing and presenting a paper on Vasco at the Front, has been in touch and I have sent him an invitation to contribute to this blog. Paul intends to travel to France to follow Vasco's tracks there, and to visit the Vasco collection in Livermore, California. It would be good if Paul could occasionally add posts about his travels and any discoveries he makes.

In searching for possibly new internet info on Vasco, I have discovered that the State Library of New South Wales has more Vasco material than I first thought.

Manuscripts, oral history & pictures
Vasco World War 1 Sketches (214 pieces) (this is what I originally thought was their entire holding)
Ragtime sketches on board our transport - Vasco, 1917 (58 pieces)
On Salisbury Plains - Vasco, 1917 (24 pieces)
Vasco Loureiro postcards and newscuttings of  World War 1 (11 pieces)
Panama (39 pieces)
http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/search/simpleSearch.aspx?authority=creatorauthorartist&ID=1241

C'mon, NSW State Library, how about making digitised images accessible so that we don't have to travel to Sydney to see them? $22 a pop plus $6.60 post and handling for purchasing a low resolution image is a bit rough if one wants to obtain a few of them.

Vasco - 1913-1916

West Australian, 30 December 1913

Brisbane Courier, 16 August 1916 - Vasco at the Brisbane Exhibition

Brisbane Courier, 23 September 1916

Brisbane Courier, 16 August 1916.

This is topical, as it is currently "Ekka Week", only 94 years later.

There is a gap in the information about Vasco, from his return to Australia from California in (late?) 1913 until his enlistment in 1916. Was his new-found domesticity with Gwendolyn the main factor in his life for those 2-3 years? Or was he hanging out at the pubs and dives and maybe on the excursion steamers such as the "Koopa", doing his caricatures for a shilling or so a 'pop'? (See below - I had a newspaper clipping that said so, but forgot.)  We know from a newspaper interview that Gwendolyn, after Vasco's death, gained permission to play her mandolin on the "Koopa" during its trips from Brisbane to Redcliffe and Bribie Island. If he was, it means that there is a body of work out there that has not been collected or researched. Or maybe, as the first clipping says, he was working on his "Round the World on a Pencil" book. If that is the case, then there could be an unfinished or unpublished manuscript floating around.

Maybe I should write a letter to the Courier Mail (the latest incarnation of the Brisbane Courier) to see what pops up.

Vasco's activities in Brisbane.

Sydney Morning Herald, February 1926 (I think).

So he did 'work' the excursion steamers on Moreton Bay, according to the first sentence of the first part of the clipping. This also gives a summary of Gwendolyn's travels post World War 1, before she settled in Sydney.

More on the Sargent "girls".

Emily Sargent did eventually turn up in the 1901 UK Census. A kind person at British Genealogy Forums winkled her out.

Emily Sargent, born Liskeard, 1871, who is a nurse/servant for Cuthbert Knocker and family.
RG13/2190/13/18 (Copyright TNA)
Lieutenant Colonel Cuthbert Knocker, if you please! And born in India, to boot.

We still cannot discover how and when Gwendoline got away from New Zealand.