Australia needs at least 3000 submariners by the 2050s for its new nuclear submarine program, but only a rare few have what it takes to deal with the pressures, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Three decades on, Matt Buckley still speaks with a sense of wonder about his first time disappearing beneath the surface of the sea. “In a submarine there is a silence that hits you in the face,” he recalls. “You submerge, you go deep and you feel a sense of transitioning to another world.”
Only astronauts, he believes, would experience the same sense of otherworldliness, of being transported to a different dimension,
When Buckley finished high school on the NSW south coast, he was certain of one thing: he didn’t want an office job. The teenage surfer had an affinity for the ocean, and yearned for a life of travel and adventure. Continuing the legacy of his grandfather, who served in World War II, he joined the navy. But what to specialise in? A career in the submarine service sounded tantalisingly mysterious. “Submariners didn’t really say what they were up to,” he says. “No one quite knew, but we knew it was something important.” After spending a night aboard one of the navy’s Oberon-class submarines, Buckley knew he had found his calling.
The hierarchy he encountered underwater was flatter and less delineated than on a warship. The bonds between crewmates were unusually close.
“From the most junior person to the most senior, everyone was completely engaged in understanding each other’s roles and responsibilities,” he says. “You’re a tight-knit, finely tuned, small team operating in an unforgiving environment isolated from everybody else.”
Now a rear admiral with flecks of silver in his hair, Buckley went on to serve as a submarine commanding officer and other navy leadership roles.
Siobhan Sturdy recalls her crewmates chuckling at her when she embarked upon her first submarine mission.
“I was giddy with excitement, it was just so surreal,” says Sturdy, who has flame-red hair and speaks with evangelical enthusiasm about life in the navy. She originally planned to work as an engineer in the oil-and-gas sector. She wasn’t enthused about the career path but felt locked into it after completing work experience in the field.
Then she met a charismatic female Australian Defence Force veteran at a university career fair and decided to enlist with the navy on the spot. The camaraderie and sense of purpose promised by a military life resonated with her.
The full article is here.
