The Paintwork's Dull but the Location is Amazing

They say that it's the journey that's important, not the destination.  Presumably "they" get lost a lot and they're trying to find some way to stop their wife making snide comments while the children are screaming in the back seat.  It is, however, a perfectly fair statement if your destination is Manly.  I don't often go to Manly because, well, it's Manly.  However friends of mine have made this suburb their current resting place in a lifestyle best described as semi-nomadic.  For them it is all about the journey at least, given their current location, one hopes so.

The purpose of the preceding paragraph (apart from the opportunity to take a totally slightly unjustified swipe at Manly) is to provide a reason for my presence on a ferry from Manly heading across Sydney Harbour to more salubrious locations on the southern shore.  The day was beautiful and the harbour glittered in the late Autumn sun.  I do love the ferry trip to or, preferably, from Manly particularly if I have no pressing business when I arrive and can sit back and enjoy the trip.  One's cares seem to float past along, of course, with a lot of scenery.

Part of the scenery was Garden Island which was emphasising its role as Australia's premier naval base with a profusion of serious looking vessels coloured grey.  As I watched the gathered military might of Australia slide slowly past I couldn't help thinking "Surely they can't all have engine troubles."  Which brings me to the subject of our navy's latest superweapons.

In a previous blog entry I suggested that we might be about to get into a war with New Zealand and Senegal.  I couldn't come up with any other reason for the recent multi billion dollar acquisition of the pair of heavy amphibious warfare vessels which are currently tied up at Garden Island for a very good reason.

Well, I have bad news; the war's off.  The reason the afore mentioned war machines are tied up at Garden Island is because currently we are experiencing a certain amount of difficulty getting them anywhere else.  There is a problem with their engines.  The actual nature of the problem seems to be the subject of a certain amount of debate.  One theory is that the navy botched an oil change.  Another is that something in the maintenance instructions got lost in translation between Spanish (the ship designers), German (the engineers) and English (used by us who are, theoretically, the operators of said vessels).

What ever the reason these two slab sided behemoths are sitting harmlessly at Garden Island while New Zealand goes depressingly uninvaded.  It is said (by the navy) that these two vessels will be the centrepiece of our fleet for up to forty years into the future.  Presumably that can be extended if the vessels cut down on wear and tear by never going anywhere.

It isn't all bad news though.  Given their size and current location if the navy can't get them working again they can probably recoup a fair amount of the purchase price by converting them into high end apartment blocks.  The location and the views would be fantastic.  With the money thus gained the navy could hire a couple of landing craft from Senegal.  Alternatively they could buy ferry tickets and invade Manly instead.