THE navy ship carrying the Ararat name is no more, with the official decommissioning of HMAS Ararat II on Saturday the 2nd of July.<\/p>\n
The Royal Australian Navy decommissioned the Armidale Class Patrol Boat at a ceremony in Darwin following 16 years of service.<\/p>\n
Commander Australian Fleet, Commodore Jonathan Earley, recognised the service of the ship\u2019s crew.<\/p>\n
\u201cHMAS Ararat and the men and women who have served in her, have made a significant contribution to our national interest, and international partnerships,\u201d Commodore Earley said.<\/p>\n
Commanding Officer HMAS Ararat, Lieutenant Commander David Martinussen told the Ararat Advocate, Saturday was an emotional day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI must admit I was a bit emotional. It a happy day but bitter-sweet at the same time because it is the end of an era,\u201d Lieutenant Commander Martinussen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the course of 16 years of the ships life there have been a lot of people that have invested several years of their life in ex-HMAS Ararat so Saturday was a bitter-sweet day indeed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Lieutenant Commander Martinussen said he was immensely proud of his crew and their achievements.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had the time of my life. I\u2019ve enjoyed working with an outstanding team of young Australians who together unflinchingly did everything asked of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy highlight was enjoying a bird\u2019s eye view of the success of a splendid crew, I couldn\u2019t have asked for more.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone has been given a formal posting order. They will go to the four corners of the wind, some will go straight to sea going units,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Lieutenant Commander Martinussen said he will now return to a position with the defence force in Canberra.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect to go back to Canberra to re-join my wife and kids to a staffing appointment but I don\u2019t know what that is yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m entering my seventh year of married unaccompanied which is a very nice way of saying I\u2019ve been posted so I am geographically separated from my wife and two teenage kids. The last time that I was posted to Canberra and was co-located with my family was December 2015 so its been a long time between drinks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Lieutenant Commander Martinussen has thanked the people of Ararat for their unwavering support over the life of the ship.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we visited the City of Ararat in early May for our Freedom of Entry it was a very special experience for the crew to march through our namesake city down Barkly Street. The warmth of our welcome underlined the strong relationship between the City of Ararat and the Royal Australian Navy.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn behalf of the officers and crew of HMAS Ararat, we remain very grateful to our namesake city and we certainly hope that at some point in the not too distant future that the city\u2019s name is carried forward on another naval platform in years to come,\u201d Lieutenant Commander Martinussen said.<\/p>\n
Since commissioning in 2006, HMAS Ararat has operated alongside Border Force, Australian Fisheries and the Australian Federal Police.<\/p>\n
HMAS Ararat has quite recently supported the maritime surveillance efforts of Fiji and the Solomon Islands at the request of both nations, during May and June of this year.<\/p>\n
HMAS Ararat also responded to a distress call from a vessel of the Solomon Island Police Force in recent weeks, helping save all 17 people on board.<\/p>\n
During service, HMAS Ararat has travelled over 500,000 nautical miles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE navy ship carrying the Ararat name is no more, with the official decommissioning of HMAS Ararat II on Saturday the 2nd of July.
\nThe Royal Australian Navy decommissioned the Armidale Class Patrol Boat at a ceremony in Darwin following 16 years of service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[31],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/hmas-4.jpg?fit=1200%2C801&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-jx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1211"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}