I want to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we meet today, the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, and pay my respect to their Elders past and present.
I also acknowledge the current and ex-serving members of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) who are with us today. Thank you for your service.
And I also acknowledge the families of ADF personnel and veterans. Thank you for your support.
Thomas Welsby Clark was born in Brisbane on 28 January 1920.
His father was a sheep grazier, a racehorse breeder and oyster farmer.
Tom was educated at Slade School in Warwick and worked on his father’s oyster leases.
He was a good swimmer and a keen sailor and was a member of the 12-foot Skill Sailing Club.
When war broke out there was only one service for Tom, the Royal Australian Navy, which he joined on 23 August 1940.
After graduating as an Able Seaman he joined the HMAS Sydney in August 1941.
In late 1941 the Sydney was conducting patrol and escort work in the Indian Ocean.
On 19 November 1941, Sydney sighted a merchant ship 200km west of Shark Bay, Western Australia.
The merchant ship stated it was the Dutch steamer Straat Malakka, but in fact she was the disguised and heavily armed German raider the Kormoran.
When the Sydney breasted up beside the Kormoran the Germans fired on the Sydney at almost point-blank range.
In the battle that followed both ships would be destroyed, half the German crew killed, and all 645 members of the Sydney would perish.
It remains the single largest loss of life in Australia’s maritime history.
On 6 February 1942, eleven weeks after the Sydney was lost, a shrapnel damaged, Carley Float was spotted drifting close inshore near Christmas Island.
In it was found the body of a deceased male dressed only in overalls.
It was the body of Able Seaman Thomas Welsby Clark – the only body ever recovered from the Sydney. He was just 21 years old.
We can only imagine what the last moments of this sailor may have been as he drifted wounded and helpless away from the stricken ship and his mates who remained.
Had he been alone, had others been with him, lost along the way?
Did he escape onto the craft himself, or had a friend seeing he was wounded, helped him aboard in a last effort to save a wounded mate?
We will never know.
With Japanese occupation imminent, those who found Thomas on Christmas Island laid him to rest in the Old European Cemetery overlooking the sea.
Full military honours were observed, but the grave remained unmarked.
Six decades later thanks to DNA testing, Thomas’s remains were re-interred at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Geraldton on 19 November 2008 with full naval honours.
In a sense, this lone man stands for each of the 644 other men who served on board Sydney.
His resting place in Geraldton, a focal point to remember each life that was lost.
The rest of Clark’s shipmates would add to the thousands of unrecovered bodies Australia has lost in war.
Tragically, like so many who served in the Second World War, most were aged in their late teens or early twenties.
For 67 years, Sydney’s final resting place remained a mystery.
Those on board during its final hours included 635 men from the Royal Australian Navy, six members from the Royal Australian Air Force and four civilian canteen staff.
For the families and friends of those who served on the ship, we can only imagine the devastation that news must have carried.
Once Sydney slipped beneath the waves, no physical mark remained of the battle, the vessel, nor of the souls who now rested on an unknown stretch of the ocean’s silent floor.
But for the families who lost their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers, their lives were forever changed.
Like so many families impacted by war, whose loved one’s had no known resting place, the families of Sydney’s crew were left to grieve in their own way.
But then, in 2008, the wreckage of both the Sydney and the Kormoran were found almost 2.5 kilometres below the surface of the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia.
This discovery came about largely thanks to the Finding Sydney Foundation and the work they undertook alongside our Royal Australian Navy.
In 2008, for the first time, a commemorative service was held over the final resting sites of both the Sydney and Kormoran, finally closing the story on this sad chapter in Australia’s naval history.
Today, 82 years on from that fateful day in 1941, we come together once more to remember and honour those men who lost their lives on board HMAS Sydney.
Today, we acknowledge the contribution made by these 645 Australians who lost their lives in our name.
And of course, we also recognise the immense sacrifice of their families, many of whom are here today.
I would like to thank the HMAS Sydney Association for its tireless work to ensure those who died on the Sydney are always remembered and that their stories are told for generations to come.
Lest we forget.
