The Hobart Chronicles XXXIII: In The Navy

Oh my goodness
What am I going to do in a submarine?
- Village People, In The Navy, 1979

Did you have any idea that the first of the Royal Australian Navy's Collins Class submarine fleet, HMAS Collins, was named after a Tasnarnian?

Well, there you go.

According to the vessel's Commander, Matt Buckley, Admiral Collins was the first Australian born chief of our Navy. He (Collins, not Buckley) was a decorated World War II hero and was actually born in Deloraine in northern Tasnaria. In fact, three of the six subs are named after Tasnarnians.

I'm not really quite sure what that signifies. Except that in my line of business, you can learn a whole lot of nothing-very-important in an hour. It's very rare that I pull rank and use my position to satisfy personal curiosity, but during Navy Week when HMAS Collins and the frigate HMAS Parramatta steamed into Slobart I broke my own rules and had a junior colleague get us on board to do a story. After all, how often does one get a squiz at the guts of one of our nation's... [border defenders? warships? expensive US castoffs?? fill in your own pejorative of choice].

Of the two, the sub was certainly the most interesting for me. I can't talk about much of what I saw as it's classified (this is no joke - I can't talk about what or how many if any weapons I saw, for example, and they reviewed my happy snaps and actually made me delete a few before disembarking). But I did get to play with the periscope, taking aim on the main landing deck of HMAS Parramatta, and inspect the three sets of V18 diesel engines. No wonder the damned things are reputed to make a heap of noise, unless they switch to the electric engines which are silent. The sleeping cabins are beyond description. From what I could see, they lever six fully grown sailors and their belongings into a cubicle the size of a kombi van's interior, with nothing but a little blue curtain each for privacy. All belongings, that is, except for a lot of sets of golf clubs which materialised as various sailors emerged from HMAS Collins to take shore leave. For all I know, they were stowed in spare corners of the weapons bay.

HMAS Parramatta's landing pad (it carries helicopters) was the scene of cocktails at dusk, which I attended courtesy of an invitation issued to my boss. I mean, cocktails amongst men in spiffy uniforms? How could I refuse to do my professional duty? Actually, it was a civilised affair (so to speak), the highlights of which were the food and wine (copious and good) and the officers, who were gratifyingly good conversationalists. Their PR skills must be honed by many such soirees in many ports, though if they were bored they were also well-mannered enough not to show it.

It was a chill Slobart [summer] wind racing across the deck after sundown that finally chased us off the frigate and back to our homes, while the boys and girls in white went about their business.