Aussies take 1-0 lead in Navy's big match

Wearing 'anti-flash' gear, the crew juggles jobs on the bridge of HMNZS Te Kaha. Picture / Dean Purcell

ABOARD HMNZS TE KAHA, Hauraki Gulf - Te Kaha's Commander, Keith Robb, was woken at 2am one day this week with a message no captain wants to hear.

"Good morning, sir," it said. "We've just been pounced by Melbourne."

That means blasted to the bottom of the ocean. Melbourne is an Australian Navy frigate.

The two countries are at war only in theory, and Melbourne didn't have to fire - just fix its sights on Te Kaha. Still, elation among the Aussies is matched by great annoyance on Te Kaha, which was spotted despite switching off radars and lights while escorting a tanker and a troop ship near Great Barrier Island.

"They caught us napping," says Mr Robb, ruefully. But the 45-year-old from Gisborne, a three-decade veteran, reckons there will be time for revenge. The annual exercise TasmanEx runs for another 10 days. Seven New Zealand vessels, including our three frigates, and five Australian ships are playing sophisticated war games.

New Zealand's Navy hasn't fired a shot in anger in 30-odd years, says second-in-command Lieutenant Commander John Butcher, "but you train as you fight. And you must never get exercise-itis."

That's because 37 per cent of Te Kaha's 190 staff are new since Christmas - either transfers or raw recruits like 20-year-old marine technician Mark Hudson, a month on Te Kaha after following his father into the Navy. He's re-painting an outside wall frigate grey; among the war games, ordinary chores must go on.

The gun and missile-equipped Te Kaha - the name means "strength" - is stretching all of its sailors. Various "mechanical failures", including water in the fuel, strike without warning. A "fire" creates spools of smoke and the first to respond becomes a "victim" of smoke inhalation.

An armed landing party boards a tanker; for the first time in exercises, the Navy has arranged with various ships plying the gulf to conduct boardings.

On top of that, five planes "bomb" the fleet; they are actually chartered Lear jets piloted by civilians, some of them ex-military. Sub-lieutenant Emma Gibbs, 28, has gained, just days before, her qualifications to drive Te Kaha. She has a "nerve-racking" afternoon on the bridge as the first planes soar overhead. "I've got a lot to prove," she confesses.

Wearing "anti-flash" gear (a burn prevention balaclava and long gloves) she races around juggling jobs - taking bearings from the compass, taking instructions from a principal warfare officer hunched behind radars elsewhere, keeping a look-out, and giving commands to get the ship into position for on-deck machine gunners. Two Brownings fire blanks in a chattering stream, leaving ears popping and shells pinging on the deck.

Off-duty, there is room for personality among the warship's steep stairways and pipe-lined corridors; a long-limbed soft monkey toy hangs from a pipe in a cabin. Attached to the outside of the sick bay door is a help-yourself box of condoms.

In the hangar where sailors swarm around a Seasprite helicopter, a large speaker pumps out top-40 music. In the women officers' quarters Neil Finn sings to the crew.

People seem purposeful and efficient, with a friendly, confident bearing. Officers are addressed as sir and ma'am by underlings, the ratings by their surnames, but there is room for warmth: "Hey, ma'am!" calls a female rating, smiling broadly, as she encounters a lieutenant. Elsewhere, one man explains to another: "I'm just taking the piss ... sir."

Navy work seems to most a bit out of sight. At sea level, however, there's a lot of learning going on. And perhaps the chance to score a few points off the Australians.