Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about an issue that's very important to me and, I think, to our nation, and that is the loss of the HMAS Armidale north of Darwin, between Darwin and Timor-Leste, or East Timor, in late 1942. On 24 November 1942, Allied land force headquarters approved the relief and the reinforcement of the Australian commandos of the 2/2nd Independent Company, which was, at that time, holding out in Japanese-occupied Portuguese Timor, as it was at that time. Members may remember me talking about a film that I made for Channel 9 called A Debt of Honour about these men. They were truly incredible Australians.

The Armidale and another corvette, HMAS Castlemaine, and a smaller naval vessel, the Kuru, departed Darwin to conduct the ship-to-shore operations for that reinforcement, from a place called Betano on the south coast of East Timor—what's now called Timor-Leste. Around 3 pm on 1 December, HMAS Armidale was attacked by no fewer than nine Japanese enemy bombers, three fighters and a floatplane. The fighters split up and came in at low level, strafing HMAS Armidale's decks with machine-gun fire. With her gunners thus distracted, the torpedo bombers mounted their attacks from different directions as HMAS Armidale's Captain Richards manoeuvred desperately to avoid those torpedoes. However, the ship was hit twice by torpedoes and immediately keeled over to port.

As well as the Australian sailors and soldiers, there were two British sailors and 65 Dutch East Indies personnel on board. Many of those were soldiers from Java. In total, 102 souls were lost with the sinking of the Armidale, and it's well past time that we had a monument to all those who lost their lives and to the rest of the 151 Australians and allies that were aboard the Armidale at that time.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 16:16 to 16:41

Darwin would be the most appropriate place to have a permanent memorial to these men, and I support every effort by the Remembering HMAS Armidale Association to achieve that aim.

Members may remember when the members for Lyons and Braddon and I rose to our feet in this place in support of Teddy Sheean when he was denied the Victoria Cross. Alongside many others, we called for a review, by the Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal, of the decision. Teddy Sheean got his well-deserved VC for defending his Armidale shipmates in the water, and they should all get their memorial.

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