Quotes About Working and Class

Work n 1 a) activity in which one exerts physical strength or mental faculties to do or produce something. b) the activities that provide one’s accustomed means of livelihood. c) a specific task, duty, function, or assignment.

The Penguin English Dictionary

"The trouble with a free market economy is that it requires so many policemen to make it work."

Neal Ascherson, 1932- Games with the Shadows, Policing the Marketplace.

"I'm a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend than be one."

Clarence Darrow(1857‑1938), American lawyer and reformer.

"Trickle‑down theory‑the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."

J.K.Galbraith 1908‑: Canadian economist, The Culture of Contentment (1992)

"He would have certainly have despised Christ for being the son of a carpenter, if the New Testament had not proved in time that to be such a howling commercial success."

Graham Greene, Dr Fischer of Geneva

"We have a single system and in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses."

Henry Brook Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, (1907)

"Let me tell you, the very best thing about the working class is getting out of it."

Neville Wran, former New South Wales Premier and ALP politician.

"When I joined the Labor Party as a boy, the branches were filled with cream of the working class. When I leave it, it has been replaced by the dregs of the middle class."

Kim Beazley Senior. He was minister for education in the Whitlam government 1972-75, his son Kim is the ALP’s federal parliamentary leader."

"The Australian Labour Party does not even call itself a socialist party. Actually it is a liberal-bourgeois party, while the so called liberals in Australia are really Conservatives."

Lenin’s Collected Works, Volume 19

"And as far the city: the Unions might be crushed, the Labour cause abolished, and every fat man got into parliament, and these things would be of less importance to the towney than Bill Somebody sprained his (bl-nky) groin last Saturday and mightn’t be able to play in the forthcoming match."

Henry Lawson: Autobiographicial and Other Writings

"It was like a great river flooding or changing its course, the way the Depression came-the insidious creeping movement of dark strong unpredictable forces, the flow of hidden currents……

Even when the disaster had spread everywhere and its destructive menace understood, something unfeasible remained……..

It was out in the suburbs mostly that one gradually came to see it.

They bought in the dole, and then the dole became “the sustenance” and around this time they unlocked the Defence Department warehouses and out of the mothballs they took the old surplus greatcoats and tunics and dyed them a dull black-all that brave khaki of 1914-18-and against the contingency of a Melbourne winter issued them out as a charity to keep the workless warm. So that as the unemployed grew in number the black army coats became a kind of adversity, a stigma of suffering.

It was a time of sad and terrible human degradation for which there seemed to be no remedy."

George Johnston 1912-1970 in his novel My Brother Jack.

"Your push is what makes the wheel turn. Without your shove there is no system....

A pay packet stops you form dying, it doesn’t teach you how to live....

Now take my case. I’m twenty-nine and have two brothers—one in the Liberal Party and one serving six years for rape and arson. My sister Peg is on the streets and Dad lives off her earnings. Mum is pregnant by the boarder and because of this Dad won’t marry her. Last night I got engaged to an ex-prostitute and I wish to be fair to her: should I tell her about my brother in the Liberal Party."

David Ireland The Unknown Industrial Prisoner 1971

Jeff Kennett's Legacy

The above pictures of Jeff Kennett and Unionists were taken outside Melbourne radio station 3AW in 1998. Kennett had just butchered Workers Compensation in favour of the insurance companies. The police had barged through our peaceful barbeque protest. Macca the Tasmanian Sparkie/Electrician was knocked to the ground, the second photo shows me helping him up.

As someone who grew up in Melbourne, (Brunswick long before the yuppies moved in), I'm amazed by the level of privatisation that Kennett carried out. Also by other state ALP governments that have followed Kennett’s lead in privatising public assets. And the gutless attitude of the Victorian ALP government in not renationalising everything that was sold off by Kennett.

Rod Quantock made these remarks on Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope on 25-9-06

ANDREW DENTON: There were times where you’ve been a trooper. When Jeff Kennett was Premier of Victoria, you described him as evil, “I just think he’s evil.” How much did you hate that man?

ROD QUANTOCK: A lot at the time. What he imposed on Victoria was an agenda set basically by an institute called the Institute of Public Affairs. These are people with an agenda. The agenda in Victoria was to privatise everything. It was to minimise taxes on business and imposts on business and it was to move the public wealth into the hands of the private sector. It involved closing down social services, it involved sacking teachers, it involved reducing hospital services. It just was an impost on the people.

ANDREW DENTON: You said you hated him at the time. Have you found a way to forgive him since?

ROD QUANTOCK: That’s probably a serious question, isn’t it? Look, he’s head of Beyond Blue, the depression task force. The joke going around in Melbourne is that he caused a lot of that and it’s really just like asking a dog to clean up after itself. No, I found him extremely arrogant. I found him authoritarian and I found him very, very destructive in ways that communities and societies shouldn’t be attacked.

Clink on the link to Rod's website.

Peter Denis Kevans 1939-2005:the battlers' poet

by John Tognolini

Green Left Weekly, the Democratic Socialist Perspective and the Socialist Alliance send our sincere condolences to Denis Kevans’ daughter Sophia, his long-time partner Sonia Bennet and his many comrades and friends over his sudden death on August 23. Denis had two wakes, one before his funeral and one after it. The first was organised at Sydney’s Gaelic Club the week after his death. The second, a week later, was at the Carrington Hotel Ballroom in Katoomba after his well-attended funeral in Leura. More than 200 people came with a guard of honour made up by members of Katoomba’s Poets at the Parakeet and the Blackheath Folk Club.

A flag in the shape of the peace symbol was made for Denis with the top part of the centre stem bearing the Eureka Flag, the bottom part, the Red Flag with a hammer and sickle, the right stem of Golden Wattle, and the left stem the Irish tricolour, representing a United Ireland of 32 counties.

Speakers at Denis’s funeral included his daughter Sophia, who gave the eulogy including how proud he was of his membership of the NSW Teachers Federation. Jack Mundey spoke of Denis’s commitment to socialism from the early 1960s. Sonia Bennett sang “The Valley of the Waters”, and renowned Sydney Irish singer Martin Doherty performed a brilliant rendition of “Joe Hill”. Botanist and poet Wyn Jones said of the title Denis gave himself, Lorikeet, from his poem “Elizabeth the Last” that “he was an eagle of Australian poetry”.

Elizabeth The Last;

I am Australia’s Lorikeet,

And I wrote this very fast,

You are a beaut,

I Thee salute —

Elizabeth the Last.

The funeral MC was shearer and poet Milton Taylor. Some of Denis’s poems were read.

L’Amour

Prime Minster Howard I’ve heard

You met George Bush and the Pope,

I liked the Pope much better,

I only had to kiss his hand.

I’d known Denis for 24 years and first heard his poetry in support of Bobby Sands and his fellow Irish hunger strikers in 1981. I can’t think of a struggle (whether it was defending Aborigines or the East Timorese), a cause (such as when Tim Anderson was framed for the Hilton bombing) or strike that Denis didn’t write about. I remember the many times he was at Cockatoo Island Dockyard during the three-month strike/occupation in 1989 and his support for the MUA at Darling Harbour and Botany Bay in 1998.

Green Left Weekly readers will remember his numerous letters to the paper. There were many times that Denis would recite his poetry to help raise funds at Green Left Weekly dinners.

Denis will be missed, but he lives on through the large quantity and quality of poetry he left us. Denis was in the league of the great Australian poets; he was a Banjo Paterson who knew his Karl Marx. He was the battlers’ poet.

From Green Left Weekly, September 28, 2005.

Steve Irwin

I was killing time, waiting for a Blue Mountains train in Penrith, the last link with Sydney’s Western suburbs before the mountains. I was feeling some what gloomy, I could not attend the funeral of John/Cummo Cummins, my old BLF Comrade, president of the Victorian Construction Division of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, in my hometown Melbourne, due to family commitments,(three thousand people attended Cummo’s funeral).

And the news came over the radio on my phone, about Steve Irwin’s death. I was in a record shop and asked the man behind the counter what he thought of Steve Irwin, he replied,” Not much.” I told him that Irwin had been killed by a stingray of Port Douglas. “What?” he said in amazement. What? Is a probably a good term about Irwin’s watery demise. The way the media has treated his killing. The fact that his death was reported internationally before his wife was informed, she was bushwalking in Tasmania and within an hour, his autographed t-shirts were selling on E-bay for $500 says much about the society we live in.

Don’t get me wrong, every life is precious and no one deserves a death like that, there have been only four deaths by sting rays in Australia, seventeen all up over the world.

But where did the media start and finish with Irwin? He had appeared on the Simpsons and South Park. In fact as an Australian I didn’t know about the Crocodile Man till I saw him on South Park, with his cartoon image grabbing a big crocodile and saying,” I’ve got my thumb stuck up this crocodile’s butt and its really pissed off.” US TV talk show host Jay Leno said of Irwin, “…that he was the best ambassador Australia ever had.” A few media commentators said he was the real Crocodile Dundee. One was Germaine Greer, she wrote in Britain’s Guardian

“Irwin was the real Crocodile Dundee, a great Australian, an ambassador for wildlife, a global phenomenon, a superhuman generator of merchandise, books, interactive video-games and action figures. The only creatures he couldn't dominate were parrots. A parrot once did its best to rip his nose off his face. Parrots are a lot smarter than crocodiles.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1865125,00.html#article_continue

I finally got round to reading her whole article, one of the best things she’s written in a long time, but then there was the timing of her article, immediately after his death. I’ve no doubt she was chasing a headline and she certainly got that.

Germaine has been vilified by many media “experts” for comparing Irwin to a modern day lion tamer. And honestly most people I’ve spoken to have been put off and bored witless by the saturation media coverage over his life and death. Yes, little kids have been affected by the man in khaki that danced with the Wiggles. And he was far more popular in the United States and Europe than he was in Australia. He even admitted this and put it down to our cultural cringe.

Going to work a couple of days after his death, I rung up Sydney’s Radio Vega Breakfast show and defended Germaine’s right to say what she said, but also made the point that it was wrong to speak ill of the dead. Saying that though, I also expressed my cringe about Irwin’s opposition to hazard reduction burns by bushfire agencies to reduce the fuel load before the bushfire season starts. And his praise of John Howard as a “great world leader” after Green senators Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle made their protest against George W. Bush in the Australian parliament in 2003.

And Irwin was a great fan of Howard’s Work Choice legislation and a strong advocate of the notorious anti-worker Australian Workplace Agreements, notably at his zoo. He was savagely anti-union, in saying that though, I’ve heard of an e-mail doing the rounds with a stingray superimposed on a picture of last years massive November 15 Melbourne rally against Howard’s attacks on workers rights. I haven’t seen it but I think it’s in bad taste. But it doesn’t compare with the experience we’ve had to endure with brain dead outpourings about him in the media.

It’s fair to say he was a conservationist. He did buy tracks of native bush that he kept in pristine condition and built his wildlife foundation, but can anyone tell me or anyone else when spoke out against Greenhouse and Climate Change? Its one thing to be an environmentalist, but you need to be more that in the times that we live in.

John/Togs Tognolini

The Strike/Occupation of Cockatoo Island Dockyard 1989

by John Tognolini

On May 10, 1989 the Cockatoo Island Dockyard shop committee, representing 13 unions, announced the occupation of the island in response to a decision by the Hawke Labor government to sell off the site. The dispute would last for 14 weeks.

Fifteen years after the strike was defeated, it is worth looking at this struggle against the background of the ALP-ACTU Accord years.

In the 1983 federal election, federal Labor leader and former ACTU president Bob Hawke campaigned against Malcolm Fraser's Coalition government at Cockatoo Island. Within a few months of Labor's election win, a thousand dockyard workers marched on the Australian Parliament in Canberra because Hawke had broken his promise to have a second 18,000-tonne naval supply ship built at Cockatoo after construction of HMAS Success was completed in 1984.

Bob Galleghan, the federal secretary of the Ship Painters and Dockers Union said at this rally: ``There won't be a second ship built unless you're going to do something about it.'' Hawke's decision would cost 1600 workers their jobs.

Galleghan was again in the thick of it during the 1989 strike-occupation. His leadership of the painters and Dockers was in sharp contrast to most of the other union officials, including Pat Johnson, the organiser from the metalworkers' union, now part of Australian Manufacturing Workers Union. Galleghan was committed to saving the jobs and the dockyard, Johnson just wanted a decent redundancy package, which to me has always appeared to be a contradiction in terms.

A key factor in our ability to maintain the occupation for the length of time we did was that a large number of shipyard workers lived on the island for three months. They were from all the jobs in the dockyard — painters and Dockers, electricians, riggers, metalworkers, clerks, firefighters. Some were fifth generation shipyard workers.

Support from the ACTU and the NSW Labor Council was token for a couple of weeks, and then turned into outright opposition to the struggle of the Cockatoo Island Dockyard workers to save their jobs.

Dockyard workers stormed a Labor Council meeting that voted down a motion for a 24-hour general strike to save the dockyard.

During a protest by the Cockatoo Island workers toward the end of the dispute the Labor Council officials locked themselves on the top floor of their building in Sussex Street. The dockyard workers had gathered outside. After hearing speakers condemning Hawke, defence minister Kim Beazley, the ACTU and the Labor Council, the workers found an open door up the fire stairs and marched up to the floor below the Labor Council officials. While this was going on, the police attacked those remaining in Sussex Street, arresting six people who later faced trial.

After this, there was the last mass meeting, which had union leaders telling strikers on their 93rd day “on the grass” that they would be open to fines under section 45D of the Trade Practices Act. Bob Galleghan said: “Anyone with a 45D fine could stand on the end of the line with the other creditors to the union.”

Isolated and ignored by the broader union movement, largely as a result of the hostility of the ACTU and the NSW Labor Council to the strike, the dockyard workers were forced to return to work. In June 1990, the federal Labor government reaffirmed its decision to sell the island.

The ALP and the ACTU don't like this historical period being discussed — it takes the spin-doctor gloss off the Hawke-Keating years. The bulk of the trade union leaderships preferred working against their memberships as Hawke and Keating Labor governments decimated large traditional blue-collar workplaces in the name of opening up the Australian economy to the rigours of the global marketplace.

Britain had Margaret Thatcher and the United States had Ronald Reagan do this to its workers. We had the ALP. With the prospect of another business-friendly federal Labor government being elected under Mark Latham, we should never forget this.
from Green Left Weekly 21-8-04

The Last Ship

ABC press release

John Tognolini ventures onto the high seas for the third in a series of radio features about working life in Australia.

After painting vivid aural portraits of volunteer firefighters and scaffolder/riggers, Togs returns to his former workplace, the Cockatoo Island dockyard in Sydney Harbour.

It was at Cockatoo that the last big ship was built in Sydney -- the navy supply ship HMAS Success. Cockatoo Island has a history stretching from the days of convict labour to the intense industrial disputes over its closure by the Hawke Labor government in the late 1980s.

Contrasting stories of the lives of workers at Cockatoo with moments from the working life of the Success as it steams from Hobart to Sydney, Togs narrates a social history that was once a staple of Australia's port cities.

But don't expect a completely sombre account of shipbuilding or life aboard a navy ship. Togs uncovers plenty of funny stories, some great characters and one especially terrifying encounter with sea-sickness.

Radio National

Sunday June 28 1998

Sharon Davis: To begin the night, producer John Tognolini ventures on the high seas to offer a third in his series of programmes documenting aspects of working life in this country. In The Last Ship John returns to his former workplace. The enormous Cockatoo Island Dockyard in Sydney Harbour. Cockatoo's history spans from the time of convict labour through enormous industrial development and upheaval to the final closure by the Hawke government in the late 1 980's. The HMAS Success commissioned for the Royal Australian Navy was the last ship built on Cockatoo. With its launch a whole aspect of working life came to an end. Mirroring similar changes around the country. On a recent sea trip between Tasmania and Sydney, John Tognolini had the opportunity to reflect on the last ship built on Cockatoo Island.

[The sound of crossing Storm Bay as we leave Hobart.]

Royal Australian Navy: HMAS Success OR 304 Mr. John Tognolini.

Welcome onboard HMAS Success the greatest Auxiliary Oiler

Replenishment ship afloat and the most capable AOR in the Southern Hemisphere.

Togs: Here I am on the last ship built at Cockatoo Island leaving Hobart going back to Sydney.

RAN: We supply fuel, food, ammunition, water, beer, electricity and cargo to other naval combat units whilst underway.

[Just out of Storm Bay.]

Young woman sailor: We're on the flag deck which is above the bridge. The highest point of lookout and at the moment we are just looking out for different boats, fishing vessels, yachts other warships. There aren't any around and marine life that could affect the course of the ship.

Togs: What sort of marine life you talking about?

Woman Sailor: Anything large, whales, maybe schools of dolphins or dugongs anything like that. We need to steer clear of them. Everything we see gets reported back to the bridge and they alter course accordingly.

[Just before the HMAS Success leaving Hobart.]

Captain Anthony Flint: It's about 6 to 8.4 right now outside and the swell should be around about 6 to 8 feet. In this ship it is not to bad. It's a good sea handling and sea keeping ship and it's quite large. So I expect the swell to be at our stern.

[The sound of Sydney Harbour.]

Togs: Cockatoo Island Dockyard was Australia's oldest workplace, it's first workers wore chains. They were convicts. I worked on submarines as a Painter and Docker. Ships were built there, turbines for power stations, all the steelworks and rigging for Sydney's Centerpoint Tower and the last ship built was the Success.

[The sound of Sydney Harbour.]

Georgie Lar: When you see the Success come in. You go yeah.

Sometimes I go down Woolomloo and I see some ships there. I worked on that one and that one. You get a bit of a kick out of it.

Really no. Ship's steel is too cold. It's to noisy and it's got no give. I wouldn't recommend working in a dockyard to many people.

[The Success in the Tasman Sea going north along Tasmania's East Coast.]

Togs: The dockyard's been closed now for nearly eight years and this ship is twelve years old. What was it like to build it?

[Sound of welding steel.]

Max Callahan: When I went there, there were two and half thousand workers there. Many of them had actually come to Australia to work specifically on the Success. We had New Zealanders. We had a lot of people from Scotland. We had people from France. A huge workforce at times.

[Dockyard workers marching on Australian Parliament.]

Togs: I was involved in the three month strike‑occupation to stop Bob Hawke and Kim Beazely from closing the island dockyard down. The dockyard unions marched on parliament house in 1983 when Bob Hawke broke his promise to build a second ship.

[Dockyard workers outside the Australian Parliament

Bob Galleghan, Federal Secretary of Ships Painters and Dockers Union:

There won't be a second ship built unless your going to do something about it.

Dockyard worker: Let's go up there and do it.

Frances Kelly: Hawke didn't keep his promise to build a second ship at Cockatoo.

Dockyard workers: We want work. We want work. We want work.

Frances Kelly: This resulted in over 1600 workers getting sacked in 1985.

On May 101989 the Dockyard workers voted unanimously to occupy the island effectively placing themselves in control of everything.

[Dockyard mass meeting during the 93 day strike/occupation.]

Peter Casser: We've been on this island struggling to keep this fight going because we believe that we wont be beaten right. And I know there is a lot of people suffering out there. I understand that. I suffering. We're all suffering. I've got a mortgage just like a lot of other people. I've got to battle but I want to keep battling because I believe that if we get defeated here we Donna loose our pride.

If you lose your pride your ratshit!

Once you loose your pride they've got the better of you!

Robert Wyatt's song Shipbuilding:

Is it worth it?

A new winter coat and shoes for the wife,

And a bicycle on the boys birthday,

It's just a rumour that was spread around town

By the women and children,

Soon we'll be shipbuilding,

[The sound of the Tasman Sea. As the HMAS Success goes up

Tasmania's East Coast]

Togs: We lost and became another example of blue collar genocide. I was laid off two weeks before my daughter’s birth. It wasn't a great introduction to parenthood.

[Fire sirens]

HMAS Success PA system: There is now some smoke and flames in the cabin. Crash on deck. Crash on deck. Crash on deck. Hands to emergency stations. The ship damage control condition Zulu.

Royal Australian Navy: You may hear various emergencies piped in the main broadcast don't panic we are trained. You will here the word safeguard included in an announcement for a real emergency.

Young Woman Officer: There are a lot of hazards as again we go through all these exercises so we know how to deal with it so if it does happen we just go straight back into a routine. You get used to dealing with an episode. You don't become blasé but it's not so unfamiliar when it does happen. You got a replanned response. It automatically kicks in.

First ABC Newsreader: Four Navy crew members are confirmed dead following a major fire aboard the HMAS Westralia.

ABC Journalist: A large fire broke out in the main engine room of the tanker.

Second ABC Newsreader: The four crew were working on a ruptured fuel line in the main engine room of the Navy tanker HMAS Westralia when the blaze broke out this morning. Nine other crew members have been injured.

Senior Naval Officer: Search parties were sent back into the blazing inferno of the engine room but were beaten back. Additional resource being called in from all fleet units in the vicinity which included HMAS Success and the frigates Darwin, Adelaide and Sydney. Initial reports of four missing are confirmed and it is my melancholy duty to inform that we have four bodies as a result of that search.

[The sound of the Tasman Sea.]

Togs: If someone asked me what I'm doing on board the Success well I guess there's a few reasons. There is the story of a ship still going. Of the dockyard that sort of been wrapped up in moth balls and the workers there. They've all gone to the four winds. All that culture is gone and this a product of their work and dedication.

[The sound of the Cockatoo dockyard and Sydney Harbour.]

Max Callahan: Many of the people working at Cockatoo Island were second and third generation employees of the island.

Togs: This is Max Callahan who was an ironworker/rigger who worked on the Success.

Max Callahan: A large number came from around Balmain, Drummoyne,Leichhardt further a field I guess Western Sydney and the Blue Mountains. A huge number would congregate at Circular Quay and all travel out on the old Kanangra which is an old wooden vessel. One of the Lady Class vessels later on. It was quite a pleasant way to go to work as we cruised up the harbour and the same thing in the afternoon. For a lot of people they would find quiet unusual the way in which we travelled.

[Dockyard industrial noise.]

Georgie Lar: Oh well it was another Monday morning we were all going into work.

Togs: This Georgie Lar who was a Painter and Docker who worked on the Success.

Georgie Lar: We were coming through the tunnel on Cockatoo. You have this cattle grid cause there's some sheep on the island. And this bloke's walked across the cattle grid and went down. Straight away we got him to the first aid. Well the funny thing was he had a wooden leg. Nobody knew he had a wooden leg and it been broken. So we took him from the first aid shed to the carpenters shed and the carpenters said they could not do to much with it and while we were mulling it over one of the tinsmiths took the bloke down to the tinsmiths took the bloke down to the tinsmiths shed and he got a fantastic tin leg with in about an hour and half. And I think he went off maybe on compo I don't know. That was funny because like this guy. Nobody knew who he was. He just come on the island one morning, broke his leg and got a tin leg leaving the Island. Cockatoo was pretty good over there. [Industrial noise of the dockyard.] Up on the hill on Cockatoo Island they had these great big coconut shaped caves. Up the top and they just go in and comes out. They used to store water and grain. There is a prison up there. There is a chapel built by the convicts up there. They actually cut that cave running through the centre of the island by hand. That was cut out by convicts.

[Christy Moore's rendition of Ger Costello's Back Home in Derry based an Bobby Sands poem The Voyage.]

In 1803 we sailed out to sea.

Out from the sweet town of Derry.

For Australia bound if we didn't all drown.

And the marks of our fetters we carry.

In our rusty iron chains we sighed for weans.

As our good lives we left in sorrow.

As the mainsails unfurled our curses we hurled.

At the English and thoughts of tomorrow.

Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry.

Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry.

I cursed them to hell.

As our bowels fought the swell.

And we danced like a moth in the Delight.

White horses rode high

As the devil passed by taking souls to Hades by twilight.

Five weeks out sea we were now forty three.

And we wept bitter like children.

Oh Jesus we shrieked as our god we beseeched.

All we got was the prayer of the pilgrim.

Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry.

Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry.

Success's PA: Stop both engines.

Togs: Success has stopped on it's first day out from Hobart as the sun sets down and the pipes have been played. We are looking at Maria Island. a daunting sort of place. The crew up here on the focsle have just dropped the anchor. And the island just takes you back to Marcus Clarke's For The Term Of His Natural Life, it feature in it. That novel. What a cold and desolate place it is. Looks pretty stunning to me but I didn't come out from England two hundred years ago did I?

The sound of the Tasman Sea.]

Young Woman Officer: We use three visual points because vision is the most accurate. At the moment we've got the light of Tasman Island and the Cape behind us and they form a triangle. This is where we were. It's not actually real time information. It is more historical fact because we are proceeding at 18 knots. In six minutes we go 1.8 miles so it is a fair distance to travel while we still trying to work out we are. So by keeping it going at six minute intervals we know a really good pattern of where we have been. I can say historically zero nine five in these conditions will make good zero nine zero.

Togs: The Success is a warship, when I travelled on it there were some relatives of the crew on board for what the Navy calls a Searide.

Captain Anthony Flint: You shouldn't feel that you are intruding on us and you shouldn't feel awkward on board because this is as much your ship as it ours. We happen to run the ship. The current crew but with out the support and everything that comes with the family association of backing us up on board we couldn't do our job. So very much this ship is your ship too and I hope you will treat that way during the week. So we'll see you all around.

Royal Australian Navy: Like most modern warships accommodation and recreation areas are spacious and well designed for it's ship's company of two hundred and five. Meals are provided from one centralized galley which includes a bakery. The medical centre includes an operating theatre, an infirmary and dental surgery. With it's well trained crew and high quality equipment Success gives RAN fleet units the ability to operate with a greater degree of flexibility and independence from shore support than has been previously possible.

[Togs walking through the Success with a Sailor.]

Sailor: What are you doing a doco on this time? Just on this ship or all Navy ships?

Togs: Well the Success and the dockyard where it was built, Cockatoo I used to work there.

Sailor: Oh yeah.

Togs: The idea of the story the dockyard is closed down and here's the last ship that was built there.

Sailor: Oh yeah Cockatoo. Did you build this?

Togs: I worked on the submarines. A cast of thousands worked on this one though.

[The sound of going through a hatchway. Then the sound of dockyard noise.]

Georgie Lar: Like the Titan you know there was a job on Cockatoo. It was the second biggest floating crane in the world it lifted some of the materials for the Success.

Togs: The Titan was the floating crane that was designed by a woman engineer in Sheffield England during the First World War. It was assembled at Cockatoo and it's log book started in 1917. It could do a one hundred and fifty ton lift.

Georgie Lar: You wouldn't believe how deep it was. because you go in one tank which is as big as football ground and then you go to the opposite corner and you take a lid off and your into another tank about as big as a football ground and then you hit the honeycomb system which is about six maybe eight layers down. and these are just oblong boxes with holes at opposite ends. And you have to slot in. Go in head first and take your piece of string with you on your ankle. So the top man he'll pull the rope every few minutes and if you never responded he try and get someone down there to help you. It's a weird job you got a lamp in your hand. It's all dark, you got a bucket and a scraper, a hammer. Chipping hammer for the paint and you go down to the bottom of this crane and take samples. Well we gets down there and it's pretty dark and you know your all on your own and the piece of string on your ankle is not going to help. There all paint crusted up about four inches deep. You know it's crunch, crunch everywhere you go. When you start scraping all the water starts pissing in. Not big holes but your just coming through. You just didn't want scrape any more because you might be on the bottom of the harbour.

[Industrial noise.]

Togs: The dockyard where the Success was a mad, friendly sort of place but it had it's accidents when the ship was being built.

[Industrial noise.]

Georgie Lar: There was an accident on Titan once. She's tying up along shore. it was like a zing sound. There was one bloke screaming at the end of it. The cable had gone and cut his leg fairly clean off. Never cut his overalls. Cut his leg.

Max Callahan: At times safety went out the window. We had situations where there be a lot of a push from management so workers try to cut corners. I remember one incident where a piece of bow section of the vessel got jammed and couldn't be put into place. And a well known shipwright who'll remain anonymous stuck his head out between the ten or twenty ton section of vessel. He pulled his head in just in time because the two sections of vessel collided with quite dramatic results. We were quite pleased to see this man still had his head. We really thought he lost it.

Georgie Lar: When she was on her first sea trials. They wanted men to got to sea with her to mop up and clean up should there be any leaks arise. When we gets there we were told to stand by all these big doors and wait for any leaks coming through the seals. We had mop buckets with wheels on them and every time you took your mop away and the ship was going around in circles all these mop buckets are going for one corner. It's just moving around. You get seasick just chasing mop buckets over threw. The sailors were all laughing some of them lost there buckets. We're all on standby for about six hours while this ship is going around and round and the circles are getting smaller and smaller. it was a bit like a fun fair better than Luna Park lad. This was a six hour ride with twenty buckets coming at you in the half semi darkness and the ships rolling and you can hear the engine grrrring. Yeah that was a fun day.

[The sound of the Success at sea.]

Success PA: We are crossing Storm Bay now you can feel the swells now are growing. Remind you to not chunder into the wind or in any passage ways or in any where you make a mess. If your feeling sick I suggest you carry a garbage bag with you. You have one with you at all times in your pocket. If you have the need you don't make a mess of yourself or the ship.

[Brian Eno's instrumental song Deep Blue is mixed the sound of the Tasman Sea.]

Georgie Lar: I wouldn't do it again. I don't think I'd enjoy going around circles on a brand new ship ever again. There's too many creaks andhorns going off. There's a couple of alarms going off here and there. You just don't know your on tenterhooks. Half of your mates are going downstairs and there on the bed. Spewing up all over the fucking place. You can't get off. Even your beers everyone is burping after about your second beer because it's sloshing around in there. You know it's terrible.

It's a ride for a day.

[Brian Eno's instrumental song Deep Blue is mixed with the sound of the Bass Straight.]

Togs: There is the roll the ship going from side to side.

There is the pitch from bow to stern.

We're in Bass Straight and it's rough.

Ship's Doctor: If you don't get seasick it's a good idea to have some and sometimes they cause blurred vision but that's not a major problem with them.

Togs: I've survived breakfast. Talking to the doctor. "Are you alright she asks?" Oh yeah. Then I have this feeling and I run to the heads, Navy for toilet and chunder. And I feel a hundred and ten per cent better.

Young Woman Officer: In compartments along this side we've got chlorine gas in drums and chlorine is corrosive if it is spilt it'll it your hand off basically.

Togs: The average age on the Success is twenty one and thirty per cent of the crew are women.

Young Woman Officer: There's Otto fuel which is used to power torpedos. It's a very thick. It looks strawberry ice cream topping. It's got its' own oxygen composed in it. Combust and it will it its' way through it. It's poisonous touch it and don't wash you hands you become sick. It's very, very corrosive and burns. The only way to deal with it is to put mats around so it can't spread and then either plain flour or kitty litter sought of stuff and you just shovel it all up and put it drums. You can't put over the side it will burn anything it comes in contact with. Hopefully it never actually happens but if it does you can sleep in your bed at night knowing that you know how to deal with it.

[ The Guided Missile Frigate HMAS Sydney comes along side the Success for a replenishment at sea exercise. There is only fifteen meters between the two ships.]

Sailor: Keep your bat down your right hand side not across your body Tashy.

Royal Australian Navy: Replenishment ships, modern maritime operations demand that naval combat units be supplied with fuel, ammunition, food and stores at sea while they are underway. Success is capable of day and night replenishment to ships along side and with her Sea King helicopter to other ships in company.

Togs: it is quite a detailed operation this. There is about fifteen sailors on the Sydney towing lines that have been shot across from the Success to allow for the actual pumping of fresh water into the Sydney from the Success.

Royal Australian Navy: Four main replenishment at sea. RAS stations are fitted. Two of which have dual functions and can be used to transfer either solids or fuel. The RAS system is designed to cope with the extreme demands caused by ship motion in rough weather and works exceptionally well.

Togs: The ship is quite big it is nearly about eighteen thousand tonnes fully loaded. It's 157.7 meters in length but there is that sense of confinement. This is your world. There is no land in sight and that's it just the sea, you and the crew.

Max Callahan: There was a certain amount of rapport between the naval personnel. they were all very keen and excited to be taking delivery of a new vessel. There was quite a lot of pride amongst the workers at Cockatoo Island for a lot of us it was quite a significant thing to be involved in. having spent four years involved in the construction we had rather mixed feelings slipping into the water and again when the fit out was completed we saw sailing down the harbour for the last time. It was a big chunk of our lives.

Robert Wyatt's song Shipbuilding:

Well I ask you,

The boys say their going to take me task,

That I'll be back by Christmas,

It's just a rumour that was spread around town

Somebody said that somebody got filled in,

For saying that people get killed in,

The result of their shipbuilding,

With all the will in the world,

Diving for dear life,

When we could be diving for pearls.

Togs: The Last Ship was produced by me- John Tognolini and Brent Clough, sound engineer John Jacobs. Special thanks to Tim McGunn, Georgie Later and Max Callahan. Special thanks to the Royal Australian Navy and Captain Anthony Flint and the ship's company of Her Majesty's Australian Ship Success.