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4

FLY NAVY!

1976

University College, in Melbourne’s leafy residential college area, provided accommodation for students, some tutoring and two meals each day. Its inmates included future engineers, lawyers, musicians and artists. There were just two prospective doctors and I was one of them, still eighteen years old.

Several months after the accident my injuries had generally healed, but one shoulder was shorter than the other because the collarbone had not been set properly, so I carried myself at a slight angle. A livid scar underlined one side of my mouth (which I carry to this day) and one of my front teeth was black, but thankfully there were no ongoing symptoms of concussion. My HSC marks had been good enough for admission to Medicine at the University of Melbourne. Plan B, to become that rich doctor and own my own aeroplane, looked like it could come to fruition. Also, injuries from the crash would not jeopardise that path. My parents, particularly my mother, were thrilled. But the subject of how they were to pay for city accommodation, books and various fees lay un-broached. Mornington was quite a distance from the university – a daily commute to lectures would have been difficult and studying at home would be virtually impossible. The residential colleges such as University provided the opportunity for ‘freshers’ from the country to settle into university life and develop a social network in their new world, however, it was expected that after their first or second year, the students would move out into their own accommodation.

At University College I belonged to a small social group, one member of which was a music student, Yvonne. However, the medical faculty at the University of Melbourne was huge. The lecture rooms were vast and packed with young people. There seemed to be very few students who had come from government schools. I listened and made notes, but in my college room of cream brick walls and varnished wood, with music floating from the neighbouring boy’s room, and the dull roar of traffic in the background, study was desultory and I still made model aeroplanes! Posters of aircraft and cockpits adhered to the walls. Aviation works featured among the piles of medical textbooks. Six years of this to go.

I had contributed my meagre savings toward the first term’s accommodation and fees, but how were I, or my parents, going to pay for the rest? I found organic chemistry difficult and I had not elected biology as a subject at school. I had a lot of catching up to do. The thought of living in noisy student digs while trying to study medicine was daunting. Above all, I couldn’t get the idea of being a navy pilot out of my head.

One morning, I had had enough. Near the end of the first term of Medicine, I strode into the navy’s recruiting office in Flinders Lane, this time confident and ready, a little more mature, and with good academic results to show.

Lieutenant Commander Kavanagh once again led the selection board, and he remembered me from my previous attempt. I thrilled at the sight of a navy flying jacket, emblazoned with his nickname of ‘Clump’ draped over a chair in the interview room – I might wear something like that one day! I answered the board’s questions truthfully and confidently, including those about my personal life and relationships, and this time I was not awkward regarding my ongoing lack of a girlfriend. A few weeks later, a telegram arrived at home advising of my acceptance onto the Royal Australian Navy’s ‘Supplementary List’ as a pilot, but subject to further physical checks because of the car accident. I was elated and relieved, but my mother was furious. I would not become a doctor.

However, I was anxious about the injuries sustained from the car crash, although it is wondrous how the young body heals. The navy provided an air ticket to Sydney for a specialist’s check, and I will never forget the orthopaedic surgeon’s final words to me: ‘I see no problem resulting from your injuries, that door is now open for you.’

I was going to be a navy pilot! ‘Fly Navy!’ was a recruiting slogan of the time – it was not just the air force that operated warplanes. While I waited I would undergo more routine medical checks and reason with my still-frosty mother, who had her heart set on a medical career for her son.

At the end of May, my parents drove me, awkward in my cheap suit, to the main gate of HMAS Cerberus that lay outside Hastings on the eastern side of the Mornington Peninsula. There, a life in the sea and sky began.

HMAS Cerberus is a land base but regarded as a ‘ship’ in the tradition of the navies of Britain and Australia. Being a training base, Cerberus was very formal, scrupulously maintained and highly disciplined. Much of the establishment was park-like, its buildings were neatly kept, and its wardroom (Officers’ Mess) was wood-panelled and smelt of fresh varnish. Two beautiful stone chapels were set in immaculate parkland.

The navy speaks a different language: its recruits become immersed in a vernacular that in some instances dates back centuries. During our weeks in Cerberus (you are always ‘in’ a naval ship, not ‘on’ one), we became fluent in the language of Australia’s navy: a melange of ancient British words and corruptions of them, and modern Australian coinage, some of it obscene.

The navy itself was often known as ‘Pusser’s’ (‘pus’ pronounced as per the bodily excretion), an ancient corruption of the word purser: those who hold the purse strings, now the modern-day Accounting and Administration Officers. Therefore, everything in the navy was Pusser’s, including the people, the ships and the equipment. Naval aircrew were known as ‘birdies’, while their seaman counterparts were known by the birdies as ‘fish heads’, or ‘dib dabs’, from the motion of that universal and omnipresent sailor’s tool, the paint brush.

The original Cerberus was HMVS (Her Majesty’s Victorian Ship) Cerberus, the old Colony of Victoria’s first warship, advanced for its time, which is now a rusted and stunted wreck that lies off Black Rock. I learned that you still ‘went aboard’ the current HMAS Cerberus over its gangway or brow (actually the main gate), back over which you would go ‘ashore’. At the brow was stationed the Officer of the Gangway. The base’s hierarchy, also like a ship, included the Captain, the Commander (second in charge) and the Jimmy (First Lieutenant). It had a Gunnery Officer, responsible for drill and ceremonial. Cerberus had a quarterdeck, part of the parade ground, with mast and flags flying. ‘Colours’, the ceremonial hoisting of the naval White Ensign, was held on the quarterdeck every morning, and all officers were expected to attend. The Ensign would be hauled down at sunset, also with ceremony.

Mainstays of the navy were senior non-commissioned ranks, the petty officers (an ancient term derived from the French word for ‘small’, petit), equivalent to sergeants in the other services, and the warrant officers. The NCO’s were seasoned navy hands, specialists in their various categories and generally, proven leaders. Below them in rank were the seamen and at this training base, the recruits and apprentices. Female navy members of all ranks were then known as WRANs (Women’s Royal Australian Navy).

Cerberus’ buildings included the wardroom, which provided meals and accommodation for the officers. For the lower ranks there was a Petty Officers’ Mess and a Junior Sailors’ Mess. Buildings had no walls, floors or ceilings, but there were bulkheads, decks and deck-heads, respectively. Individual rooms, for officers and petty officers lucky enough to have them, were always cabins linked by a passageway. At the end of the passageway were the heads, the toilets, named from time immemorial in sail, where the crew relieved themselves from primitive platforms at the bow, or ‘head’ of their ship. Inspections by senior officers were known as Rounds. All spaces and cabins had to be clean and ship-shape. ‘Stand by for Rounds!’ the petty officers would shout, and everyone had to be present, standing at the ‘ho’ (attention) while the Captain or Commander satisfied himself that all was clean and in order, with possibly a polite word or an admonishment to various sailors or midshipmen.

Food served from the galley was known as ‘scran’, supposedly an acronym for ‘Shit Cooked by the Royal Australian Navy’. Breakfast scran could comprise ‘train smash’ (tomatoes and onions) accompanied with eggs and plenty of ‘redders’ (tomato sauce). Morning tea could be a ‘WRAN’s nipple’ (coffee scroll) or a ‘snot block’ (vanilla slice) from the goffa wagon followed by a ‘maggot bag’ (pie) or ‘snorker’ (sausage roll) for lunch. A day’s work or long night duties were sustained by frequent ‘brews’: tea or dry, powdery instant coffee, served up from the brew boat: an urn and its accoutrements.

Soft drinks and unaccountably, salutes were goffas; one drank a goffa or ‘threw’ one to a superior officer. The naval salute is different to that of the army and air force. Reputedly, the hands of the Royal Navy’s sailors (the ‘tars’ of sail days) had perpetually tarry palms from handling and scaling the ship’s ‘standing’ rigging, tarred to protect it from the sea; therefore it was decreed that they would salute with palm inwards to hide the unsightly blackness. The air force, army and most other disciplined services of the Commonwealth countries salute with the palm outwards.

A buzz (rumour) could be discussed with our oppos (friends) over a brew or a goffa. At the end of the day one might do one’s dhobi (washing) and if low on soap powder, one might purchase some dhobi dust, perhaps along with a goffa, from the ship’s canteen. In the navy, most objects were ‘dhobied’ including oneself under the shower, clothes, vehicles and aircraft. Slops was clothing and uniform provided by the navy. A complicated knot was a ‘bunch of bastards’. An easy task was ‘a piece of piss’.

Officers’ evening meals in the wardroom were formal. A WRAN or RAN steward would present a card to the diner outlining the joints (main courses), and one would choose, for example, Joint Two. Officers were charged Mess bills for food and drinks through their allocated Mess number, which the steward would note. Rations and Quarters was a charge deducted from the officer’s pay for basic food and accommodation if he lived ‘on board’ in the wardroom of a land base. Later, he may live ‘ashore’ in private accommodation. Later still in life, he might live with his young family in the married patch in a house provided by the navy, or privately rent with a small subsidy from the service.

In a naval wardroom, officers were expected to dress for dinner. If you wore civilian dress (‘mufti’), you were to approach the senior uniformed officer present (usually at the bar) and ask him to ‘excuse your “rig”’. While I was in Cerberus, that was invariably an elderly, tipsy Education Officer of Irish descent, perched on a bar stool, who would reply with, ‘Oi don’t like yer tie, but oi’ll let yer go joost this once.’

Operational units and ships would occasionally hold a banyan (barbecue) at some beach, with plenty of beer, and goffas for the very few non-drinkers. For watch keepers at their posts: duty sailors and officers, their scran would be brought to them in a ‘fanny’ (billy-can or Mess tin). ‘Fanny’ harks back to the gruesome murder of little Fanny Adams in nineteenth century England; cynical English sailors of the day speculated that her butchered remains had found their way into the Royal Navy’s victualling system. ‘Victuals’ (pronounced ‘vittles’) was food and consumables. ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’ has generated an abbreviation that is in common use among impolite society today.

A comic book (some of the apprentices were as young as sixteen) was a ‘mickey duck’, and an improbable yarn, an outright lie, a film or a novel was a ‘dit’. If one was on good terms with the ‘chippie’, the carpenter, his workshop might provide you with a ‘rabbit’. Rabbits were anything obtained for free, favours, or presents brought home from some exotic port, often for your ‘squarie’ (girlfriend).

Sailors were organised into Divisions for administrative and disciplinary purposes. Divisional Officers were responsible for their sailors’ wellbeing, discipline, reports and promotion. It was a challenging job and additional to the officer’s primary duties. Divisions was also a regular parade held on the ship’s quarterdeck, where all turned out in ceremonial dress, whites or ‘blues’, (the colour actually almost black) according to the season. Naval drill is somewhat different, the term ‘attention’ is not used, as the command is ‘ho’. For example, ‘Squad, ho!’ The air force was known as the ‘crabs’, because reputedly they could be commanded to march sideways, whereas army personnel were ‘pongoes’.

My joining rank in the Royal Australian Navy was ‘midshipman’, an ancient term. In centuries past, boys as young as eight joined Royal Navy warships as midshipmen, effectively apprenticed officers, to be inculcated in the ways of the sea and naval battle, living with their peers in the ship’s gunroom, often located in the ‘middle’ of the ship. My rank insignia comprised black shoulder boards that carried a white square topped with a brass button. In naval folklore, young midshipmen of the days of sail would often neglect to wipe their noses, so handkerchiefs were buttoned to their uniform reefer jackets, which gave rise to the formalised insignia and the terms ‘snotties’ or ‘reefers’ for midshipmen.

A mixed bag of potential naval aviators gathered in Cerberus’ wardroom on that first afternoon. We had been directed there from the gangway, and met by Lieutenant Jones. Jones sported gold Observer’s ‘wings’ high on the left breast of his dark blue, almost black, winter uniform coat, and he was responsible for transforming a group of civilian boys into naval officers, fit for training as aircrew. He would excel at his job, using just the right mix of formality, friendliness and support. Among my group were the long-haired and cheerful Ray from Goondiwindi in Queensland; Tony, an urbane graduate of Italian descent; and other boys from all over Australia with varying degrees of hair-length and age. There were also several older, worldly-looking lads who were obviously more comfortable with their new environment than the rest of us. They were previously enlisted sailors, who had applied for and been accepted for officer and aircrew training. Collectively we were known as Basic Aircrew Training Course Number Four of 1976 (BATC 4/76), and Lieutenant Jones very quickly apprised us of the fact that we had been engaged as naval officers first, and aircrew second.

Not all of us were prospective pilots. Half our group had been recruited as observers. Naval observers were the equivalent of the air force’s navigators, sensor operators and air electronics officers, a highly specialised and demanding role. Jones ushered us to our accommodation in the gunroom, which was basically a dormitory. After organising scran for us in the wardroom, he advised us to ‘get an early night.’

The flicker of harsh neon lighting shattered our sleep at 0500 the following morning. So it began: a run in the chill Victorian winter darkness, dhobi (shower), breakfast then haircuts, where Ray’s long blond locks fell to the floor. There was a uniform issue at ‘slops’ then lectures began: naval ranks, the ships in the fleet and the structure of the navy’s hierarchy.

From the outset, midshipmen were regarded as officers, unlike the air force’s aircrew cadets, and incongruously we had to be saluted by passing ratings and petty officers in this training base. However, a drill instructor summed up the general attitude to us by saying, ‘I don’t mind calling you “sir”, because I know I’m superior.’ The ex-sailors on our course were charged with mentoring, leading by example and occasionally, making known our shortcomings. A young and unsophisticated eighteen, early in the course I was told in no uncertain terms that my table manners left much to be desired. Chastened, I paid particular attention to the ‘knife and fork’ lecture on wardroom etiquette. Wardrooms were formal and the navy excelled at silver service.

Several times a year, a wardroom would host an even more formal ‘Mess Dinner’. After cocktails, the officers in black tie and Mess jacket (and their ladies if it was a mixed affair) would file in, waiting for the President of the Mess to take his seat at the head of the vast table. The meal would proceed genteelly with the clink of cutlery and wine glasses, a quiet buzz of conversation, the stewards solemnly waiting on the diners, and perhaps the ship’s band in one corner, playing quiet and appropriate music.

After the meal came time to ‘pass the port’. A huge decanter of port wine would be slid along the table, always to the left, in accordance with tradition, ensuring that the decanter never left the surface of the table. Legend had it that in the ancient Royal Navy, naval officers loyal to Scotland’s ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ would pass the decanter over their glasses of water, an unspoken tribute to the exiled prince, ‘over the water’. After the game was up, the navy decreed that the port decanter was always to be in contact with the table. The tradition would also be far more practical in a rough sea.

Eventually, it was ‘Mister Vice’s’ solemn duty to toast the Queen: ‘Mr Vice, the Loyal Toast!’ Mr Vice was a junior officer, seated at the opposite end of the President, selected for the role either as a tribute to his wit, as a punishment, or both.

‘Gentlemen, the Queen.’

‘The Queen.’

A clink of glasses, and the toast was made, but with a difference: the navy toasted the monarch while seated, a throwback to the cramped wardrooms of the wooden ships, their deck-heads too low for officers to stand upright properly. Then followed the traditional naval toast, one for each day of the week. The port would continue on another round of the table, and then another.

From the cumulative effect of pre-dinner drinks, with the toasts and other formalities over, the atmosphere would descend into general disorder and hilarity. Through Mister Vice, an officer could accuse a friend or colleague of a real or imagined transgression, who would then have to supply a suitable excuse. If the riposte was considered lame or un-amusing he would incur a fine from the Mess President, usually in the form of bottles or further ‘rounds’ of premium port, the cost placed on his Mess number by a grinning steward. Bow ties had to be hand-tied; a suspected ‘clip-on’ could be revealed by a tug on the suspect’s tie, leading to a round of port bought by the wearer if found false, but if found correct, the challenger would have to pay. Later the President would stand up, which would signal general adjournment to the wardroom’s bar.

The drinking and ribaldry would increase further if the Mess Dinner was not a mixed affair. In the tradition of the military’s ‘work hard, play hard’ way of thinking, an area would be cleared, and the Mess games would begin. One game was called Moriarty: two officers would be blindfolded and would lie on the floor gripping a rolled-up newspaper (preferably the Sunday edition) in one hand and the other officer’s arm in the other.

‘Are you there, Moriarty?’ one player would call.

His opponent would reply ‘Here’ then attempt to manoeuvre out of the way. Then wham! Down would come the first caller’s newspaper. Turns were taken until one of them gave up. In the game of St George and the Dragon, a ceiling fan would be turned on and the challenging officer would stand underneath it and follow its revolutions with the end of a broomstick until somebody called ‘Charge!’. The player then lowered his broomstick in the manner of a jousting knight’s lance and charging a target set up at the end of a line of chairs and spectators. However, the dizzying effect of following the fan blades would usually result in the player careering off to one side and ending up in a pile of furniture and people, to the multitude’s entertainment. Carrier landings, a game also played by the air force, involved the lining up of several tables, lubricating their surfaces with beer, and candidates launching themselves upon it to slide to the other end. ‘Night qualifications’ could be attained by candlelight.

The Mess Dinner would eventually end after childish games and excessive drinking in formal uniform, an outlet for young men who worked hard for long hours. But, in strict naval tradition, it was still expected for all officers to attend Colours the next morning at 0800.

For us midshipmen, Mess Dinners lay well into the future. On the BATC, every day commenced with the flicker of the dormitory’s neon lights at 0500. We immediately changed into sports gear and made the group run through the cold early dawn with masses of starlings twittering from the ancient palm trees lining the roads of the base. After dhobi and breakfast, we started the day’s program of lectures, drill, physical training and more lectures. Then, an early dinner in the wardroom, ravenous, but ever so careful to follow the required etiquette. After that, study, assignment work and then sleep. The BATC was a six-week mix of physical, academic and practical training. The practical training included drill, basic survival at sea, rifle and pistol firing, boat work and emergency training as applicable to ships.

Drill featured but not excessively so, nor to the detriment of other subjects. The course marched to each lecture or training event. The petty officer drill instructors bawled their commands and criticisms at us with the same fervour as they did at the junior sailor trainees: ‘Squad, ho! That was bloody woeful! No wonder we’ll have the bloody Russians loose in the Indian Ocean with you lot out there to defend it … sirs.’

‘You there! Midshipman! Where’s your fucking cap … sir?’

Fire fighting was realistic: at the training ground, metal structures were fed with fuel to replicate violent fuel fires, to be extinguished by the trainees. A low, rectangular steel building nearby represented the interior of a warship. The multiple compartments inside were accessed by ‘knee knocker’ hatchways through the bulkheads, and the whole structure was pumped full of real smoke. Masks and air cylinders were issued, and we were directed to enter this structure and make our way to the other end and exit. A fellow mid, his exercise complete, handed me his mask and cylinder, and into the building I went, and the door was shut behind me with a clang.

I proceeded in total blackness. Air flowed through the valve in my mask and I felt along with the back of my hand. Over a ‘knee knocker’ … the next compartment … another breath, then, the mask sucked against my face – the air had run out! No problem, there was a reserve, so I activated its switch.

Nothing.

Fighting panic, I shouted through the rubber of the mask. There was no air left. I stumbled forward, scrabbling for the exit. I heard noises behind me and, fortunately, a course-mate had heard my muffled calls. Grabbing his belt, I could only try to hold my breath while he led me through the steel maze and finally out into open air. It was a revelation of how dangerous the environment inside a ship could be under emergency or combat conditions and it was also one of the very few occasions where equipment let me down: the breathing device had not been refilled properly. It was also an important lesson in thoroughly checking survival gear.

After the final examinations and assessments, BATC was complete. However, over several days during the course, a sobering sight in the wardroom at mealtimes had been a solitary midshipman. He had failed the pilot’s course at Point Cook. Marking time back in Cerberus, he was waiting for allocation to an alternate naval career path, most likely that of Observer or Air Traffic Controller. For young Midshipman Carr, this was the first inkling that successful completion of the pilot’s course was not by any means guaranteed, and that an intense and difficult road lay ahead.