Possibly the ship with the most colourful World War II history was HMAS Australia, fondly known as "The Aussie". The Aussie fought for almost the entire duration of the war. A county class cruiser commissioned in 1928 she was the second ship to bear the name of her country. With the outbreak of WWII Aussie sailed for the Atlantic to begin her long wartime career that she was to fight on all fronts and against all enemies. She fought twice at Dakar in Senegal, closing right in under the fort's heavy guns and sinking a French destroyer.
Bombers of the luftwaffe tried in vain to sink her whilst she was berthed alongside in Liverpool during the period when the city suffered its worst blitz. During her war service Aussie went everywhere - with the British Home Fleet in Scapa Flow, escorting the Atlantic and Indian Ocean convoys and around the coast of Australia searching for German raiders, cruising almost as far south as Antarctica.
In December 1941 when Japan entered the war Aussie became the flagship or Rear Admiral Crace, followed by Admiral Crutchley and then Commodore Collins. In January 1942 the cruiser assisted in escorting the first US troops to Australia. Operating in the Coral Sea it pursued and attacked the Japanese from Guadalcanal to Hollandia, surviving everything its enemies could throw at her. Then in the closing stages of the war at the battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines Aussie encountered Japan's most secret and diabolical weapon.
Anchored just off a bombardment point, late in 1944, Aussie received its first taste of a new weapon of warfare. Out of the blue skies of Leyte came the 'Divine Wind" or the Kamikaze. Japans suicidal attempt to stave off what was almost certain defeat in the pacific war. The first Kamikaze hit against Aussie was by a A6M5 Zero-Sen Fighter fitted with a 200 kilogram bomb, the impact of this snapped one leg of the ship's tripod mast, causing a huge shower of wreckage to rain down upon the compass platform.
After the demise of Chillibutts cache it was time for new cache at the new memerial. Freddo's father King Monte of Porter Guster served on The Aussie during his naval career.