Baker and Elder Boyles. On Jan. 23, 1921 I was installed as conference president and Elder Cook was released, soon to leave. 

On Feb. 4, 1921, after receiving a permit and getting it signed by a prominent citizen, we three elders visited the Royal Mint in Perth. We saw and walked among and handled gold, gold, gold. We saw a truck with gold arrive at the mint. They let the truck through a strong door into a room, then shut and lock the door behind it, then unlock and open another door in front then shut and lock that door. 

The gold is cast into bricks about like a cone split in two. Each one weighed about fifty pounds. These were lying all over the place. Then the gold is melted and run out in strips, the right thickness and a little wider than a gold sovereign. These strips maybe 10 feet long were lying all over the place, in bundles, on benches, floor, etc. There were no workmen that (there) at the time. These strips were run through a machine that cut out the blanks. The blanks were in wooden boxes and the remnants lying all over like junk. Then the blanks were run through a stamping machine and the finished coins were in wooden boxes. At the end there was a scale graduated into sovereigns. I ran my hand through a large (2 x 2 x 3 feet) wooden box and brought up a handful and put them on the scale and balanced it, then counted just to check. All the time the three of us wandered at will, handling and hefting and etc. Sometimes the guides would be in front or behind or among us. It seemed that we were not being watched. I don't think you could find a place like that in this country. It was quite an experience. 

On June 12, 1921, after many farewells and well-wishes and nearly one and one-half years in Perth, I left with Pres. Rushton on the Trans-Australian Railroad. There were many to see us off. I cried. 

Crossing the continent of Australia was quite an experience: great distances of hundreds of miles without a tree or house and no curves, vertical or horizontal, in the track; eleven hundred miles without crossing a living stream of water. Natives in their primitive surroundings met the train at water stops. 

In Adelaide on July 26, 1921 there was a letter instructing me to be in Sydney to catch the boat Aug. 3 for home. It was all over. 

Elder Cook left Australia a month ahead of me. I left a few days before David O. McKay and Hugh J. Cannon arrived in Sydney on their tour of the Pacific Missions. When they arrived at Sydney they called a conference of all the elders of the mission in Sydney. Before the elders left Perth for this conference, they ordained Brother Hoyle an Elder and put him in charge of the branch at Perth, to preside, receive tithing, etc. Thus was fulfilled the prediction I made to Elder Cook when I met him on the train way back on June 2, 1920 when I told him I had found the man who would take charge after we had gone home. Brother Hoyle and family came to Utah a few years later and settled in Glenwood. 

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