HMAS Canberra

Warrior’s rusting place beneath the waves.

Finally at 2.0pm on Sunday 9th October the 31year old frigate HMAS Canberra finally slipped beneath the waves off shore from Port Phillip Heads, Victoria.

With a muffled boom some 16 underwater charges inside the hull detonated and within two minutes she dipped her bows and slipped very gracefully below the surface. It was not the easiest sinking as the weather had delayed the scuttling from Saturday to Sunday and just before the given time she lost an anchor giving the organisers an extra headache as they tried desperately to hold her in position. But as soon as the explosives blew the bottom out of her she went down extremely fast.

A group of clearance divers have since been down to inspect the wreck and they report that all is well totally upright and will now be left to settle for at least a month before diving will be allowed to commence on the wreck.

For the diving community it will be an enormous boon for the industry as the large size of the wreck and the mystique of it being a warship would attract divers from all over the world.

Many of the ships fittings have been left in place including the cleaned out engines. Even the Captains chair is there on the bridge, but it has been double bolted and the screw heads rounded off to stop divers trying to salvage items.
It has been a long process getting the ship scuttled but as a diving platform for novices to experienced divers it should be a world class dive site, having dived the HMAS Brisbane off the Queensland coast not long after it was sunk and again recently I was amazed at how soon it has become what we call a living reef and it certainly lives up to that title, so I can foresee that the HMAS Canberra given time will be an equally impressive site.

Anybody heading for Melbourne Australia and fancy diving the Canberra within the next few months a few of the local dive centres will be running regular dives to the wreck, so probably a Google search will find you one of the local operators.