HMAS NIRIMBA
January 1975 - April 1977
Because the navy did not accept female apprentices, not for about another fifteen years in fact, I was one of about thirty teenage boys from all over Victoria who crowded into the recruiting centre in Flinders Street, Melbourne on 12 January 1975 to sign my life away.
With families bustling about, the ceremony took place, not that I remember much about it, but before long – I was in! I was not even seventeen and had made the biggest decision of my life, enlisting for the next twelve years. Had I done the right thing? Yes. But was it the easy choice driven by my idealistic, naïve vision of the excitement at traveling the world – free of charge – that I thought it would be? Maybe not. The one thing I did know was that my job would result in me working with ships and that was what I wanted to do.
With the ceremony finished we made our way, with our families, to Spencer Street railway station to catch the overnight train, the Spirit of Progress, to Sydney. Many of my friends and all my immediate family were there to see me off for the start of this great adventure. My mum and my nana were both crying, though I couldn’t understand why. I kissed them good-bye, promising to write regularly. The expense of telephone calls, and telegrams, left letter writing the only practical option. Long, newsy, hand-written letters were still the main way of keeping in touch.
My friends were laughing at me, saluting, and making jokes about McHale’s Navy, a popular sitcom based on a United States Navy torpedo boat based in the South Pacific during World War II. ‘It’s not going to be like McHale’s navy. You won’t have Ensign Parker with you,’ they were saying. My sister was probably just glad to see the back of me for she would finally get her own bedroom. Dad simply shook my hand and wished me luck.
Through all of this, there was a pang of guilt as I felt that in some ways, I was escaping a less than ideal home life. Although never formally diagnosed, Dad, like so many others who had experienced the horrors and privations of war, would have, in the twenty-first century, been diagnosed with PTSD2. Having survived all he and his shipmates went through, how could they not be diagnosed that way?
Unfortunately, back in those days it was not a disorder that was recognised, and sufferers were just expected to get on with their lives. As time went on and more and more of his friends died of any number of causes, he suffered regular nightmares, he drank and smoked more and more, his behaviour and health deteriorating as the years passed. Three packets of unfiltered Phillip Morris cigarettes a day and more alcohol than we realised led to his first heart attack when he was about fifty-two.
Although never physically violent, he was prone to dishing out verbal and emotional abuse when he came home drunk, which seemed to be most nights. It took its toll on everyone, most of all Mum and my sister. Now I was leaving. It was not without guilt, but I also took solace in knowing I was expected to go out and make may in the world while I was still in my teens.
Everything I took with me was packed
