Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about an anniversary that takes place this Saturday: the 43rd anniversary of Australia’s greatest peacetime military training accident. On 10 February, 1964, 82 naval officers and sailors lost their lives when HMAS Melbourne, an aircraft carrier, collided with HMAS Voyager, a destroyer, off the south-east coast of Sydney. The Sea Power Centre outlines the events that took place that night in their ship history of the HMAS Voyager. It states:

On the night of Monday, 10th February 1964, HMAS MELBOURNE was engaged in night flying exercises off the New South Wales coast. VOYAGER’s role was that of plane guard, involving the rescue, if necessary, of aircrew personnel from the sea. Since both ships had just completed refits, this was the first time they had been involved in close quarters maneouvring for almost six months. Both the carrier and destroyer were ‘darkened’ with only navigational/operational lighting in use.

At approximately 2056, some twenty miles south east of Jervis Bay, the two ships were in collision. MELBOURNE struck VOYAGER at the after end of her bridge, heeling her over to an angle of about 50 degrees. A flash appeared to come from VOYAGER’s ‘A’ Boiler, and she emitted high-pressure steam and black smoke. Debris, including the revolution table from VOYAGER’s bridge, and a pair of binoculars, was thrown onto MELBOURNE’s flight deck.

The impact pushed VOYAGER bodily through the water for a few seconds, and then she broke in two. Her forward section passed down MELBOURNE’s port side, and the stern section down the starboard side. The forward section sank soon afterwards and the after section about three hours later. The disaster resulted in the loss of 82 lives (14 officers, including the commanding officer, 67 sailors and one civilian dockyard employee). There were 232 survivors. MELBOURNE was damaged but sustained no casualties.

The wreck of HMAS VOYAGER lies some 600 fathoms deep, twenty nautical miles off Cape Perpendicular on a bearing of 120 degrees.

Quite rightly, Australia commemorates and mourns those we have lost during wartime each year, obviously with the biggest commemorations taking place on Anzac Day and Remembrance Day. There are also a number of other commemorative days throughout the year on which we remember those fallen in specific conflicts. However, often little attention is paid to those whom we have lost during peacetime service or training accidents.

The collision between HMAS Voyager and Melbourne, whilst it is our greatest peacetime tragedy, has unfortunately not been a unique event. On 19 February 1948, at RAAF Base Amberley, a Lincoln crashed during landing, killing 16 young men. On 25 January 1950, a fuel explosion aboard HMAS Tarakan saw the deaths of eight young sailors. On 7 April 1955, in particularly tragic circumstances, four young men died when their Lincoln crashed into a mountain during a mercy flight for a sick child from Townsville to Brisbane. On 11 January 1974, five airmen died when their Iroquois crashed near Stanthorpe in Queensland. More recent tragedies include the 1996 Black Hawk collision near Townsville that killed 18; the 2005 Sea King disaster in Nias, Indonesia, that killed nine during a humanitarian assistance mission; and the Black Hawk chopper crash just last November near Fiji that claimed two lives.

Those are just a few examples of the tragedies that have befallen our serving men and women while they were on duty engaged in peacetime activities, humanitarian assistance or training. There have been over 500 deaths during peacetime, some involving multiple personnel and others involving individuals, such as the tragic passing of Trooper Lawrence during a training exercise in 2004. (Time expired)