In August 1914, news of war trickled down to a German logging ship docked at one of Australia's southern most tips.
The Oberhausen was stationed at Port Huon, south of Hobart, and its crew was certain the English would confiscate their ship.
"We young hot heads were all in agreement … but the master of the ship was against it."
The Captain's decision led to Mr Stegherr spending the war at internment camps in Australia, a time he documented in a meticulous diary for his mother.
Now his view of the war, and Australia, is being published, providing a rare perspective of a moment in history.
For the past two and a half years, Paul Thost, 91, has been translating the pages, written in Old German, from his home in Hobart.
"[Old German] was discontinued from 1941 onwards but I had learned it at school," Mr Thost said.
Mr Stegherr's diary details the crew's unusual arrest, undertaken by naval reservists.
"The Captain opened the bar and he also had snacks prepared for the arresting seamen," Mr Thost said.
The men went on to live in internment camps at Hobart, Bruny Island and in New South Wales.
Six pages at a time
In 2014, a century on from that arrest, a group that maintains the historic quarantine station on Bruny Island decided to commemorate the Oberhausen arrests and the event was covered by a German magazine.
Two years later, Mr Stegherr's granddaughter, Roswitha Muller, got in touch with the group.
"Her grandfather had done five diaries … and she really wanted us, as a group, to have a loan of the diary that incorporates Hobart and Bruny Island," said Kathy Duncombe, from the Wildcare group Friends of Bruny Island Quarantine Station.
"We were over the moon and one of the photographs in it [is the] first ever photo of the Shelter Cove Jetty," she said.
Finding someone local to translate the almost 600-page diary was a challenge, until Mr Thost came on board.
As Mr Stegherr's story came to life, the group decided it should be made available for everyone to read.
"He travelled a lot around Hobart because, as an officer, he was able to be out on parole," Ms Duncombe said.
"[He] was very shocked at Bellerive Beach, because men and women were swimming together, which was not on in Germany.
"He was writing this diary for his mother and [writes], 'I know you wouldn't approve'."
Ms Duncombe said Mr Stegherr had surprising freedoms on Bruny Island, too, but that slowly deteriorated as the war progressed.
"They did a lot of fishing … they didn't like our flathead — there's a lot of discussion about that," she said.
Any profits made from the published diary will be used for maintaining Bruny Island's quarantine station.
Diary 'a rare and valuable thing'
Across Australia there were almost 7,000 people interned during World War I, and the vast majority were German.
Many referred to themselves as prisoners of war but most were civilian internees.
Flinders University professor Peter Monteath has researched internment camps.
"That diary is a gem, in part because we know so little about Bruny Island," Dr Monteath said.
Dr Monteath said it was unusual to have a viewpoint from someone who was interned, rather than from the detaining power, in this case Australia.
"It is relatively rare that you find someone who had the will, capacity and desire to commit their experiences to the written word," he said.
"It is a rare thing that something of that nature was preserved. It makes something available to an English readership that otherwise would be completely lost to history," he said.
'Both seamen'
There are four more diaries written by Mr Stegherr that are yet to be translated but, at 91 years of age, Mr Thost said the task would need to be undertaken by someone else.
"I was pleased with the job I've done. There is a fair bit to be learned," he said.
Mr Thost was born not far from Mr Stegherr, in the south of Germany, and also arrived in Tasmania aboard a ship.
"I asked the skipper for permission to sign off and he wouldn't allow me to sign off, so I jumped ship here," he said.
He has written a diary for much of his life.
The similarities between the two men run deep, and Mr Thost said he believed they would have got along.
"[We're] both mountaineers and both seamen," he said.
