Pride of the fleet sails into port

Jean Neysen chats with sailors on board HMAS Parramatta / Pic: Cameron Richardson Source: The Daily Telegraph

SYDNEY and other ports around the nation will be blitzed by navy sailors and their cash next October when the Navy celebrates the centenary of the first ever fleet review in October 1913.

Taxpayers will fork out about $12 million for the event from October 3-11, but according to Premier Barry O'Farrell that money would be returned many times over by sailors and their families and other visitors to the Harbour City.

Jean Neysen followed her dad Donald McKenzie into the Royal Australian Navy and she is over the moon about the prospect of 500,000 people lining Sydney Harbour to welcome in a fleet of 40 warships from 20 countries and a dozen tall ships as well as 10,000 cashed-up sailors.

Mr McKenzie was a leading telegraphist on board HMAS Australia when the brand new Australian fleet, the fledgling Commonwealth's first big ticket purchase, sailed through Sydney Heads to be greeted by massive crowds.

"He was born in Broken Hill and the first time he saw the sea, when he was a very small child, he thought it was going up, but then he found it was flat," Mrs Neysen said.

Her father joined the navy at 16.

"All he wanted was a life at sea."

Mrs Neysen hopes to meet more people whose fathers were on board one of the seven warships in the first fleet review. Mr McKenzie joined the Victorian Navy before moving across to the RAN when it was formed.

Mrs Neysen joined up in the dark days of 1942 and was a wireless operator like her dad.

Navy chief Vice-Admiral Ray Griggs, who escorted her on board the frigate HMAS Parramatta anchored near the Opera House yesterday, said it would take most of the day for ships in the International Fleet Review to enter the Harbour.

Following the review they will participate in the biggest naval exercise in Australian waters for 25 years.

"If you have got half a million people on the foreshore it is a wonderful way to commemorate the arrival of our navy for the first time," Mr O'Farrell said.

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