FEBRUARY 2008

Greetings once again, fellow shipmates,

A belated “Happy New Year” to one and all. On behalf of your Committee, I wish you all the very best for 2008 and hope to see you all during the coming year.

Since I last reported in we had our last official event for 2007, the presentation of the Recruit School Instructor of the Year Award at CERBERUS, on Dec. 6th 2007. Once again, this was a great night, being the final Passing Out parade for the year, but unfortunately the Award ceremony didn’t go to plan. After all the awards had been presented, the dignitaries had left and the parade ground had cleared, we were left with our award still unpresented! Something finally clicked, and we finally got to do the presentation without the parade in attendance to applaud the recipient. A major communication breakdown, and one that hopefully will not occur next time?

At my attendances at the Kindred Assoc. meetings on your behalf, the RSL has managed to fine tune the arrangements for this year’s Anzac Day march and has made provision for extra vehicles to transport the frailer members during the march. On the day, discount parking is available at Federation Square and electric buggies are available to get the “less than able” to their step-off point.

Whilst I am on the subject of Anzac Day, please jot down in your diary our Anzac Day march at Chelsea RSL on Sunday 20th April. The assembly time is 0900hrs, step off at 0930hrs. On completion, the guest speaker will be Maj. George Logan RFD Retd. Vice President Victorian Branch R&SL of Australia.

Just prior to Christmas, my wife and I escorted Gordon White MID (ex Sydney II) down to CERBERUS to record a session of ‘living history’ with Ms Toni Munday, courtesy of the CERBERUS Museum. This was to obtain Gordon’s recollections of how the Depot was during his time there during WWII. This has now been transcribed and will be included in the next printing of the “Birthplace of the Navy”, a history of HMAS CERBERUS. This highlights the value of recording the memories of our “Old and Bold” before their experiences are lost for ever.

On Sunday 20th January a group of our members attended the wardroom at CERBERUS for the presentation of Evan “Darby” Allan’s medals to the Museum by Mrs. Judith Blake. They were in the form of a montage covering the naval career of Darby, and were accepted on behalf of the museum by Capt. David Garnock. In return, Capt. Garnock presented two sets of miniatures for Judith’s boys. The montage was another work of art produced by Vern Bechaz. A great job Vern. This now completes the full cycle of the Associations involvement with Darby Allan, from his time at his nursing home, to his State Funeral at CERBERUS, to the scattering of his ashes from SYDNEY IV, to the preservation of his medals. Pictures of the montage and the presentation are available for viewing on the website. On a subsequent visit to the CERBERUS Museum I was shown the montage on display. Our thanks go to Garry Hermsen, the Museum Curator.

I would like to put out a request for assistance from any of our ex-Sydney II members. To assist in the possible identification of the body that was washed up on Christmas Island, have any of you got any photographs of Officers that would have been on board Sydney II at the time of her meeting with the Kormoran? If you could look through your albums, shoeboxes and newspaper cuttings and let me know, it would be greatly appreciated. It maybe the last piece of the jigsaw to complete the picture.

Finally, I have received a request from Alan Griffin MP, your Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, for input into establishing a Prime Ministerial Advisory Council on Ex-Service Matters. If you would like to offer your opinion into the ways we can improve our communications with the DVA, please contact myself or your Secretary, Dr. John Carroll with your ideas.
Cheers for now and hope to see you all on Anzac Day.

John Atkins
President 2007/2008