Sir Charles Orr's Memoirs Volume 3

HMAS Protector's Crew

The author erroneously believed that the crew must have been from HMAS Sydney but this ship had yet to be commissioned at the time of the Boxer Rebellion and the only Australian ship on station was HMAS Protector which was technically a South Australian government ship at the time and in fact it was actually referred to as HMS Protector at the time. It is interesting to consider that one of the men in this photograph is possibly the man discussed by the author when he wrote:
One morning a couple of our barges started from Tientsin to bring up supplies from Taku. They were manned as usual by Chinese, and had as escort a handful of Australians, ratings from HMAS Protector who had been turned into a sort of Military Police, since there was no naval work to be done and the cruiser was idle in port. As the second barge passed the French pontoon, its stern bumped into the latter, whereupon a French soldier standing on guard cursed the Chinese polesman who was steering and struck him with his fist. One of the Australians lying on deck basking in the sun witnessed this brutal and wholly unjustified assault. He sprang to his feet in a fury and was in the act of jumping on the pontoon to deal with the Frenchman when the current swept the barge downstream. Beside himself with anger and baulked of his revenge the Australian stood for a moment shaking his fist at the Frenchman, and yelled at him, "Waterloo, you b___, Fashoda, you b____"
This picture is courtesy of RAN

Charles Orr's Memoirs Volume 3