8th August 1990, Garden Island, Sydney.

You could say it all started on the 8th August 1990. It was a Friday afternoon about 1300. We arrived at Garden Island Naval Base in beautiful weather without any hiccups. I was on watch in the engine room as we got along side and was looking forward to the slow four hour shut down of the main engines and boilers with all the safety checks to be made. As I was on the afternoon watch, I also had the dockside duty for that day. We were alongside for the next nine days taking care of planned preventative maintenance before our deployment to the South China Sea for usual patrol.

My name was called over the ship's piping system to report to the upper deck immediately. I looked at the Chief of the Watch for permission to leave the MCR and he nodded nonchalantly. I proceeded to the upper deck and reported to the Quartermaster. He laughed at me and asked where I picked up grandma on our last stop here whilst pointing onto the jetty. "Bloody hell, how did she get in here?" I asked nobody in particular.
"Got some special pass from headquarters, apparently," replied the QM, "Give us her number when your done son, she's more my age."
"Yeah, right mate. She's my bloody mother".

I went ashore and asked mum why the hell she had turned up. By this time word had gotten around that some 'front bum' was on the jetty waiting for me when the ship arrived, so we had an audience of randy Jack's hanging off the rails shouting and clapping. I quickly found out that mum had received a phone call from my Aunty Louise Somerville, or better known by the lads as Lieutenant Commander, Naval Headquarters, Wellington, Louise Somerville, about our impending deployment to the Gulf of Oman to take up station with the US and Australian contingent of what was latter to be called 'Desert Storm'.

Mum had flown there from New Zealand just to say 'Goodbye and good luck'. I quickly told her that I was on duty that day and would try to find a stand-in for me so we could go and have dinner and a few drinks. I re-boarded the ship and went straight down the stoker's mess to find a stand-in. All luck to me LMM Scouse was looking for a quiet night to study up on his boiler ticket so he readily agreed to stand-in for the price of my next tot of rum. He obviously knew something I didn't at this stage and so I agreed. Then as if by magic, the captain called the ships company to attention and Spliced the Mainbrace. Second time in less than a week. We huddled around the flight deck to receive our tot and Scouse was true to his word and accepted mine from my mug gracefully. Bugger it, I thought to myself, that would have been a magic start to the weekend. And as if the skipper had heard my words the Mainbrace was spliced again, this time by the Prime Minister. Well, something must be going down. First mum tells me a load of crap that I'm sure she made up to give her an excuse to come to Aussie or she really does know something. The Captain then called for all hands to be on board for a message from the Prime Minister by 0750 on Saturday morning.