Memory Flags: An Impossible Typology

Abstract

For close to 30 years, my father worked for the Australian Navy. He was an electrician who installed and repaired the armament, radars and communication systems on battleships and submarines. It was a job he loved and was proud to do, something I as a surly teenager could not quite understand when dragged along to open days at the naval base at Garden Island on Sydney Harbour.

He likes to share many stories about his time at Garden Island and jokes that by the time he retired, even the stones in the landscape knew who he was. One of these stories, a memory I ashamedly force him to recall, took place on the morning of 12 February 2009. I asked my father to tell me as much as he could remember about the event. This was the second time I heard the story from him: The first was the day it happened in 2009, and the second was now, 12 years later.