I enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy in 1986 and I served for 20 years ashore and in the skimmer fleet – surface ships.
I always wanted to be a chef, but mum encouraged me to complete my HSC. After that I was too old to do a chef’s apprenticeship so I joined the Navy because you could pick which career you wanted to follow. It didn’t hurt that my dad’s mate and his sons were in the Navy, as was my coach from my junior softball days.
I was posted to sea early in my career and learnt very quickly how busy the galley can be. When I was the Petty Officer – running the galley - I started around 3 am for the bread bake, then made sure breakfast was on the line, do the orders, get lunch on the line, if there wasn’t an exercise in the afternoon, you’d try to get an hour’s sleep then go back for dinner service, do all the night orders, make sure the midnight meal was on the line and go to bed around 11 pm and get up at 3 am, and do the bread bake and so on. We served on average 700 meals a day over four mealtimes. Even when alongside or overseas you still tend to feed most of the crew. Sailors liked to come back and eat onboard because it’s cheap!
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Saturday or Sunday, there’s no sleep in especially when you’re at sea AND a cook. Back in the day there was occasionally a ‘Sunday Routine’ when it’s a little more relaxed for the rest of the crew but they still need to eat so for the cooks, ‘Every day’s a Monday’.
A ship generally carries seven weeks of supplies and runs a seven-week cyclic menu, so all the orders are ready to go when alongside to replenish. There are five choices for lunch and seven for dinner including salads and cold meats. There’s a hot line, a salad bar and sweets bar. The crew would always have a whinge there was nothing that they liked but I’d ask, ‘how many choices did your mum give you at home?’ The Officers in the Wardroom would eat off the same menu but occasionally we’d do speciality dining, mess dinners or Captain’s lunches when in port.
Pizza nights were probably the easiest because you’re feeding 200 people and you know that about 175 of them are going to have the pizza. You’d have your stock standard massive trays of pizza but people could also put their orders in and you could make special pizzas for them. We loved to look after the fridge techs and the laundry staff in particular, as they could always make our life a little bit easier!
I played a lot of sports - particularly softball - while serving and met so many people from the other services. When posted to sea, activities are organised for when you are in port so I played softball all over the world. I’ve played in Egypt, Pakistan, India, through Asia and America. I was also heavily involved in the Australian Defence Softball Association and competed against Army and Air Force in the Tri Service games, and then in a combined Defence team that competed at a national level in competitions like the Arafura Games and against international Defence teams, particularly New Zealand.
I had several sea postings including HMAS Sydney in 1992 as part of the first combat ship to have females as part of the crew. It was a steep learning curve, and we were deployed to the Red Sea for DAMASK VII [enforcing sanctions on Iraq] pretty soon after joining. It was my longest deployment at just over seven months. I was also posted to HMAS Darwin when we were deployed to East Timor.
I’ve been out for 18 years now and the transition for me was not difficult as I had both hospitality and training skills, thanks to a posting to the Sailor Leadership and Management Faculty, teaching leadership skills to up-and-coming sailors. Upon leaving the Navy, I transferred straight into a training role for the NSW Government and have been there ever since.
Being out, I miss mostly the people and the trust with them. A job’s a job, but in the service it’s the people that are the difference. You spend a lot of time with them. Fortunately, I am still in touch with many of my service mates, and some of them have become my lifelong friends that I know I can always count on.
Overall, I had a great career and a good experience. Defence service comes with accepting orders and if you’ve been given an order, for instance to duck, you don’t have time to debate as there may be a bullet coming towards your head. You can argue after the fact if you don’t agree, but it’s about accepting the process and it’s usually for your benefit!
This is the story of Melinda Dagg as told to Carla Edwards.
