By Walter Burroughs This article continues a story from Weather Islands published in the March 2021 edition of this magazine. The first article told us a lot about the weather ...
History - general
Two wrecks linked by one Family
By John McGrath Given that the front cover of this magazine depicts a recent postage stamp with a magnificent image of HMVS Cerberus, this story by one of our contributors ...
Pearls of Controversy: Broome’s British White Divers 1912-1913
By Kate Reid-Smith In February 1912, a group of ex-Royal Navy (RN) men arrived in the northern West Australian town of Broome. They had left Britain on 23 December 1911 ...
Occasional Paper 105: Naval History – Does it Matter?
What is the point of naval history? Is it to provide a rich framework through which contemporary Naval debates can be viewed or is there something more there? Must it always say something about the World we live in today while also addressing the one we hope to inhabit in the future? ...
The 50th Anniversary of the Naval Historical Society of Australia: The Story So Far
This year, 2020, marks the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Naval Historical Society of Australia. Following the Melbourne/Voyager/Frank E. Evans collisions and sentiment turning against an unpopular Vietnamese ...
Letter: Formation of the Royal Australian Navy
Re: Naval Historical Review Vol. 41 No 73 Sept. 2020, An Essay on the Forming of the Royal Australian Navy by Midshipman Lloyd Skinner Dear Editor I read Lloyd’s essay ...
Trouble with the Neighbours
By Colin Randall Garden Island has always had trouble with the neighbours. The earliest recorded was in 1788 and the latest in January 2020. Over the intervening 232 years neighbours ...
The Percy Islands and some Visitors
Continuing the series on islands around our coastline we venture a little further south down the Queensland coast, dropping the pick at that wondrous yachtie escape, Middle Percy Island. The ...
Occasional Paper 96: RAN Encounters with Papua New Guinea’s Big Rivers
By David Michael The passing of Commodore Sam Bateman RAN, (Rtd) in October 2020 reminded many people of his Command of the PNG based patrol boat, HMAS Aitape and its ...
Occasional Paper 95: Grandfather was a cableman
By Fairlie Clifton Fairlie Clifton is a long-term member of the Naval Historical Society and foundation member of the Australian National Maritime Museum where she volunteers as a guide. Her ...
Occasional Paper 93: Boxing in the Navy
By John Smith John Smith, our senior researcher, joined the RAN College in 1946 and retired as a Commander having specialised in gunnery. He served in many RAN ships and ...
Book Review: Wyatt Earp – The Little Ship with Many Names
Wyatt Earp: The Little Ship with Many Names. By Trish Burgess. Connorcourt Publishing, Cleveland, Queensland. Paperback, 124 pages. rrp $29.95 This book review follows closely in the wake of the ...
Letter: The Palace letters
On 14 July 2020 previously secret correspondence between the then Governor General Sir John Kerr and Her Majesty the Queen was published by the National Archives of Australia 45 years ...
Dr Frederick Wheatley, Headmaster and Cryptographer
A new book, Australian Code Breakers by James Phelps, has recently been published on the fascinating topic of wartime code breaking. As the front cover tells us this is the ...
Occasional Paper 85: A Curious Spectacle
By Brooke Twyford This paper was provided courtesy of Australian National Maritime Museum volunteers. It was published in the June 2020 edition of ‘All Hands’, the Australian National Maritime Museum ...
Kings Cross in World War II
By Nick Hordern In 2020 we celebrate the 75th anniversary year of the opening of the Captain Cook Dock which joined Garden Island to the mainland and we gained a ...
Palm Islands – a Naval Connection
By Walter Burroughs The Palm Islands and Challenger Bay affords a large sheltered deep-water anchorage, the last such facility on Australia’s east coast before reaching the northern extremity of the ...
The Solomon Islands and Bougainville Island
By Walter Burroughs Political upheaval After thirty five years of a political alignment between the Solomon Islands and the Republic of China (Taiwan), on 22 September 2019 it was announced ...
Occasional Paper 70: The Ship’s Garden – GARDEN ISLAND
By Colin Randall Colin is a Committee member, volunteer researcher and tour guide of the Naval Historical Society of Australia with a particular interest in the history of Garden Island. ...
Letter: The 9/11 Boatlift
Almost coincidentally we recently received correspondence from two readers, Megan Hughes and Tony Maskell, asking if we had knowledge of the 9/11 Boatlift Memorial in New Jersey. We trust the ...
Book Review: Lying for the Admiralty: Captain Cook’s Endeavour Voyage
The following review by Paul Brunton, the eminent curator of the State Library of New South Wales, first appeared in Cook’s Log Vol 42, No 2 (2019) the quarterly magazine ...
The White Ensign Club at Nowra
By Fred Dawson, with acknowledgement to Foster Emery (dec.), Albert Morrison (dec.), Len Seyffer, Robyn Florance, OAM, Alan Clark, AM and Dr John Haken. Following the commissioning in August 1949 ...
Clearance of Contact Moored Mines by Wire Sweeps
By Mike Turner It is difficult to obtain accurate numbers for the total number of sea mines that have been laid, but the estimate is about 900,000, of which about ...
The Pong Su Incident – April 2003
By Dennis J. Weatherall The end of the Vietnam War resulted in the arrival into Australia of Vietnamese refugees with the first, known as ‘Boat People’, arriving in Darwin on ...
Occasional Paper 69: The Naval Garden on Garden Island, Sydney
December 2019 By Colin Randall Colin is a volunteer researcher with the Naval Historical Society of Australia and a tour guide for its heritage tours of the Hill. He lived ...