The visit of the Great White Fleet.(History)

WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST public event in the first decade after Federation? According to those who lived through those years it was the visit of the American Great White Fleet to Australia in August 1908. Not only was it a great occasion for the new nation, it helped to forge a close and continuing relationship between the navies of Australia and the United States. The warm reception afforded the Americans on that occasion contrasted to the way our allies were treated later in the century. During the 1980s, visiting US Navy warships were deemed by a coalition of left-wing groups to be prime nuclear targets while their presence in Australian ports symbolised Australia's complicity in American imperialism.

A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE

WHEN I WAS FIFTEEN and determined to join the Royal Australian Navy, my father arranged for me to have a guided tour of USS Monticello, a mid-1950s vintage American amphibious warfare vessel, which was berthed at Port Kembla not far from Wollongong, where we lived. Although the ship had been worked hard during the recently concluded Vietnam conflict, its Cold War future was uncertain. Most credible contingencies did not include an opposed landing of troops and supplies. But in the eyes of a teenager, Monticello was big, imposing and indicative of America's considerable naval might.

The highlight of my tour of the ship was the chance to inspect a small landing craft and to meet the chief petty officer who maintained and operated it. He was a great ambassador for both the ship's company and the uniformed service he represented. Without any prompting from me or my father, he said how much he was enjoying his first time in Australia and praised the warm and welcoming spirit of Australians. His friendliness was neither forced nor contrived. It was genuine and spontaneous. Although no one had told me why the ship had been sent to Australia, I went home thinking the United States Navy and its personnel were very impressive and was pleased to know that we regarded them as our friends and allies. I later learned that goodwill visits, like that of Monticello to Port Kembla, are an integral part of maintaining an international maritime alliance.

After being admitted to the Royal Australian Naval College in January 1979 and finishing the initial phase of my seagoing training, I was posted to the Fleet Tanker HMAS Supply in January 1985. Several weeks later the American destroyer USS Buchanan sailed into Sydney Harbour after being formally declined permission to enter New Zealand's ports. Wellington's drastic action followed the refusal of the United States Navy to either confirm or deny that Buchanan, a conventionally powered Charles E Adams class guided missile destroyer that was very similar to HMA Ships Perth, Hobart and Brisbane, was carrying nuclear weapons. The Lange government, which knew unofficially that the ship was not nuclear armed, fully intended to create a diplomatic incident that would effectively terminate the ANZUS alliance as a tri-partite security agreement.

To protect Buchanan from protesters in Sydney Harbour, the American ship was tied up at Garden Island dockyard in board the much larger Supply. It was during casual conversations with some of the American destroyer's junior officers over adjoining guardrails that one volunteered the information that Buchanan had not embarked nuclear weapons for some time. It was, I was told, usual policy to disembark nuclear weapons at Subic Bay in the Philippines before the ship sailed for Australia, New Zealand or the South-West Pacific.

For nearly a week, those serving in Supply (including the author) contended with the often reckless and sometimes dangerous actions of protesters. The purpose of their campaign was to draw attention to their continuing opposition to American warship visits, which they asserted would make Australia a target for Soviet missiles in the event of a nuclear war. On several afternoons before Supply, Buchanan and a dozen other warships sailed from Sydney for combined exercises off the coast, my shipmates and I were jeered by banner-waving protesters as we left the dockyard to go home. They accused us of being warmongers, of being ignorant as to the real purposes and the actual consequences of American ship visits, and of irresponsibility in not condemning nuclear weapons. Our interactions with the protesters were unpleasant and unsettling.