Scouting Out HMAS Ballarat in Civitavecchia
25 June 2009
Children of diplomats share a common bond with the children of many service members, they move house a lot. However, when your parent is an international diplomat the moves are, more often than not, between different countries or continents rather than just interstate.
The Scout movement is a worldwide organization, and for many of the diplomat’s children, it is one of the very few constants in their lives. In Italy, the children from some of the embassies in Rome have banded together to form a special cub and scout troop, where despite the children retaining the scout uniform from their country of origin, they regularly come together as one to continue their scouting endeavours.
So when Paul Given from the Australian Embassy saw that HMAS Ballarat was going to be visiting Civitavecchia, Italy, he saw a perfect opportunity for the scouts to spend some time together on an Aussie warship.
On the morning of the visit, the children ranging in age from four to 11 years from Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Brazil arrived on Ballarat’s flight deck for their introductory brief. Some of them were noisy with excitement, while others were quietly in awe of the big grey ship that they had just boarded. Regardless of their initial reaction, they were quickly swept up in an interactive tour of Ballarat.
"We had planned quite a tour for the kids, taking them all over the ship to see the gun, the bridge and even to the galley where we prepare food for 180 or more people every day.
"They all had lots of questions about the ship, like how fast she goes and the range of the gun as well as questions about NT09, including how long it took us to get here and how many kilometers we had traveled to reach Italy,” said Seaman Officer, SBLT Liam Walters.
All these questions and more were covered during the interactive and fun ship’s tour which allowed the children to climb up onto the five inch gun mount, look through the mounted high powered binoculars on the bridge wings more commonly known as ‘Big Eyes’ as well as sitting in the CO’s seat on the bridge.
"After they were shown around the ship the tour took on a more hands on approach as the parents stood back and the scouts scrambled to get involved in the firefighting. They donned firefighting uniforms, identified hotspots using the Thermal Imaging Camera (TIC) and shot jets of water over the side from the firefighting hoses.
"They were pretty impressed with the fire hoses and all wanted a go for themselves. They needed a bit of assistance as even sailors can struggle with the heavy hoses due to the seven bar pressure produced when the fire hose is charged. The kids were very keen and told me that it was pretty cool that I got to do it all the time for a job," said Seaman Marine Technician Peter Marchioni.
After a morning constantly on the go, the scouts devoured a huge pile of vegemite sandwiches prepared by Ballarat’s stewards and cooks, with even some of the non-Australian scouts announcing that the vegemite tasted great.
