The recent controversy about the use of foreign marching bands at the Opening Ceremony (accent on the first syllable!) of the Sydney Games took me back in time to the ...
Naval history
The HMAS Sydney – HSK Kormoran Engagement (November 1941) – Part 2
Young Endeavour – Challenge for the future
The people who are prepared to challenge their own ideas about their limitations are the people who make the most of their lives. These are the people who are prepared ...
Minehunter – Project Progress News
GASCOYNE launches. The fourth of six Huon Class minehunters ADI is building for the Royal Australian Navy was recently launched at Newcastle. The on schedule, within budget launch of GASCOYNE ...
Book Review: In the Navy
IN THE NAVY, by D. R. Rickard This is a little gem of a book. It is a sailor’s eye view of life in the Australian Navy in the 1960s ...
Book Review: Australian Fighter Aces 1914-1953
AUSTRALIAN FIGHTER ACES 1914-1953, by A.D. Garrison (Published and distributed jointly by Air Power Studies Centre and Australian War Memorial 1999, 250x175mm, 117 b&w photos, 10 tables/lists, ix/188pp, card cover, ...
Book Review: Alone on Guadalcanal – A Coastwatcher’s Story
ALONE ON GUADALCANAL – A Coastwatcher’s Story, By Martin Clemens CBE OBE AM MC High on anyone’s list of largely unsung heroes of the Pacific War must come the British and ...
Raine Island Beacon
Re THE BEAUFORT TOUCH (Marsden Hordern NHS 21/1) In response to his queries in that article I would recommend to Society members including Mr Hordern the reading of an ...
Heaven’s above – A yarn with Harv
The Sound of Torpedoes
At least once a year, somewhere in Australia, the Oscar winning movie “The Sound of Music” is aired on television. Many members are aware of the main plot; the story ...
The Gin Pennant – The signal for all celebrations
The origins of the Gin Pennant are uncertain, but it seems to have been used since the 1940s and probably earlier. The distillery manager of Plymouth Gin was quoted ...
The Relocation of HMAS Parramatta Memorial
HMAS Parramatta, a torpedo boat destroyer of the River Class, launched in 1910, was the first ship of the Royal Australian Navy. It was decommissioned in 1928 and, with HMAS ...
The Countess of Hopetoun Incident, December 1915
Book Review: Very Ordinary Officer
Very Ordinary Officer describes itself on the cover as the social and naval story of a Yorkshire-born Australian called Geoff Feasey. The two strands of the story run side by ...
Raine Island Beacon
Drake and his game of bowls and Nelson recalling a boat for a sailor’s letter are loved legends from long past wars. But legends also flow from the Golden Age ...
Splice the mainbrace – HMS Urania
In August 1945 HMS Urania had been at sea for 36 days. We were part of Task Force 37, commanded by Admiral Rawlings RN, the strike component of the ...
Obituary: Captain Barbara MacLeod AM
“To achieve the marvellous,” wrote Tom Robbins, “it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought”. When a 24 year-old school teacher from Capel in Western Australia went by train ...
HMAS Jervis Bay II announced
Obituary: Captain Gerald Haynes
Captain Gerald Haynes’s wartime career combined skill and daring at sea and in the air. He was officer of the watch in HMS Victorious in the chase that destroyed the German ...
Captain Glossop describes Emden action to Banjo Patterson
Huon Class Minehunters – Progress Report
The first of this new class of minehunters, HMAS Huon, was handed over to the RAN on 25 March 1999 after a series of successful sea trials, “the major milestone ...
The Dardanelles Campaign
Letters – Australians at War documentary
The 1999-2000 Federal Budget provided $5 million for the production of a TV documentary series, Australians at War, which will cover the major conflicts in which Australia has participated, and ...
The Grave of Annie Dorrington – Australian Flag Co-Designer
It doesn’t mean we owe allegiance To a forgotten Imperial dream: We’ve the stars to show where we’re going And the old flag to show where we’ve been. (from a ...
NZ Scow ECHO – role in World War II
The New Zealand scow was developed from the Canadian/US log barges that plied the Great Lakes during the 1800s. First built in New Zealand in 1873 for Septimus Meiklejohn of ...
