PM Transcripts

FOR MEDIA WEDNESDAY, 27 AUGUST, 1980
HMAS DIAMANTINA GIFT TO QUEENSLAND MARITIMNE MUSEUM
The Commonwealth Government is to make a gift of the frigate,
HMAS Diamantina, to the Queensland Maritime Museum Association.
As the frigate was built in Queensland ( by Walkers Ltd. at
Maryborough), is named after the wife of Queensland's first
Governor ( Sir George Bowen) and carries the same name as one
of Queensland's major rivers, it is fitting that Queensland
should be the final home for the Diamantina.
HMAS Diamantina, first commissioned in April, 1945, is the last
surviving World War II vessel of the R. A. N. and was the scene
for the acceptance of the surrender of the Japanese at Nauru
and Ocean Island. She was the research platform from which was
conducted the investigation of many oceanographic phenomena
( including the Diamantina Trench off Western Australia, the
deepest known trench in the Indian Ocean).
Her transfer to the Queensland Maritime Museum Association is
supported by the Naval Historical Society of Australia.
The Queensland Maritime Museum Association plans to extend its
Maritime Museum to preserve and exhibit items of historical
interest pertaining to ships and the sea, and the Diamantina
will be installed as a permanently dry-berthed exhibit within
the old Graving Dock at South Brisbane.
I wish the Association every success with the restoration and
exhibition of the Diamantina, which will be handed over at a
ceremony to be arranged in the near future.
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