Supply and command

By Jock Serong

In April this year a media storm erupted over the smallest of things: an urban dance troupe gyrating on a wharf in front of the grey hull of a warship. An ABC News story about the incident showed silver-haired admirals looking on in apparent disapproval beneath a nearby marquee. Only they weren’t. Sloppy editing had created a misleading impression of what had actually happened earlier in the day. The context was the commissioning of a new naval vessel at Garden Island in Sydney. Amid the confected outrage, the name of the ship was easy to miss. It was HMAS Supply, and its entry into naval service is a more interesting story than the one about the dancers and the admirals.

It’s late May in Eden, six weeks after the ABC footage was aired, and a powerful westerly whips across Twofold Bay, just north of the Victoria–new South Wales border. Captain Ben Hissink is delicately manoeuvring Supply across the bay from the ammunition wharf to the township. It will be only the third time the vessel has ever been berthed.

The steep sides of Supply catch an alarming amount of wind – enough to make the vessel swing and strain against the restraint of its bow thrusters. Supply is as long as the playing surface of the MCG and dependent for its movements on a combination of bow thrusters, propellers and two huge tugboats; the process cannot be rushed. There is scrutiny: as well as the veterans invited aboard, there’s a sense that the town is bristling with binoculars. Eden is Supply’s ceremonial home port, and the locals are keen to familiarise themselves with their new resident.

Hissink is all calm intensity, perched on the bridge wing with $300 million worth of steel beneath him. He stands in the wind at a pelorus, a navigational device, with a radio clutched in his fist. He’s