He said they were impatient for action so that, "When the move [out of Egypt and off to battle] occurs, it will come like a draught of champagne."

He reported that independent observers credited the Australians with the finest physiques of any soldiers anywhere and with being breathtakingly fast and efficient trench diggers.

Bean thought "the quickness of the men in entrenching is partly due to the fact that a proportion of them are miners, and the Australian contract miner is probably about the most useful man in the world when a battalion has to get quickly under cover".

Even our battalion bands were first class, Bean rhapsodised, and he'd been moved to see one bandsman practising his heart out.

"He was a piper. I suppose his mates would not support his piping in his tent or in the mess room. But nothing would keep him from his beloved pipes. So he went out there all by himself when the evening began to fall and played alone to himself and to the desert. When last I saw the lonely figure he was still standing there, toe drumming . . . and thin notes, in a wheezy minor key, straying, with every fitful gust of breeze, across the wilderness."