Today we got up in the morning, had breakfast and then drove off to the Fremantle Maritime Museum. Fremantle is famous for this museum. Its very interesting with all of its displays of motor boats, sailboats and fish. It is also home to an Oberon class Submarine that is open to tours through the hull.
When we arrived we walked into the Kimberly Nature meets Science exhibition. It is a sort of gallery of pictures that were taken by different photographers. There were an awful lot of mangrove snails and Fiddler Crabs. There were also a fair few fish photos. . All of the pictures were very interesting. There was even a video clip showing about how Fiddler Crabs live on the mudflats. Then we went to the assembly point for the tour of the H.M.A.S Ovens, the Submarine which had its home at the museum.
H.M.A.S stands for His or Her Majesties Australian Ship. The tour guide, who's name was Fritz told us that there was an actual difference between a Ship and a Boat. The difference being that you step down into a boat and up onto a ship. The tour through the submarine was very interesting and I was amazed at the narrowness of the rooms and smallness of bunks. We stopped at an old bow that was cut off from another submarine to be exhibited in the museum. The big lump at the end of a Submarine is where the sonar is housed. A Submarine has two modes. Active mode and passive mode. When in active mode the Submarine sends out a ping and the ping bounces off an object and goes back to the submarine, therefor letting it know what lay ahead. In passive mode however the Submarine just goes along underwater listening for another Submarine's sonar pings.
Then we went inside the submarine. It was on a slipway pulled all the way out of the water. We entered through the most forward hatch which would normally have been used to load the torpedos into the torpedo room. In the torpedo room which is the most forward room. One corner held a dummy dressed in an orange suit. This suit, I later found out, was used for emergency escape. What happened was this. The person was dressed in this orange airtight suit and the suit is filled up with air. The person then climbs into a chamber with a hatch at the bottom and a hatch at the top. The bottom hatch is then closed and sealed while the top hatch gets opened. The chamber then floods with water and the person floats to the surface of the ocean and waits to be picked up by a rescue boat. Pretty clever hey?
Next we moved into the junior sleeping quarters room. This is where the junior submariners slept when the vessel was in action. All the bunks are 6.4 foot long and have a safety belt across the middle of. The reason for this being, should they surface in rough weather, then the submarine would pitch from side to side therefor throwing the crewmen out of their bunks if they weren't strapped in. The next room that we walked into was the senior sleeping quarters which actually had tables to eat at. The seniors ate at tables in the mess unlike the juniors who ate in their cabins. The bunks were pretty much the same. The room after that was the control room. The access to all rooms on a submarine is through a round door hole that is sealable so that they could stop water spreading throughout the sub.
In the control room there were all these screens and about a zillion knobs and dials. There was also a steering joystick to dive up and down. They steered the submarines with steering wheels just like boats. The seats in front of two screens were for the people in charge of firing the torpedos. Another interesting thing was the massive sprit levels that show if the submarine is level. The spirit levels are about 40 cm long and 10cm high.
After that we went to the engine room. There are two massive engines, each with around 600 horse power. The submarine's maximum RPM are 1800. In the engine room when it was running, back in the days of service the temperature and noise could reach an incredible level. Then we walked trough the small passageway between the rear torpedo room and the engine room. In that small passageway there are three toilet cubicles which are so small that you have to undress, back into the toilet, sit down do your business and get up, get dressed and walk away . After that we went into the rear torpedo room which was easily the biggest room in the sub. The rear torpedo tubes were removed because new torpedos were being developed, those you could steer with a wire that came out of the end.
When we came out of the submarine we had found out lots of new things about submarines. One really interesting thing was that the control room had two periscopes. One was an attack periscope which had a very small diameter so that it did't create a big wake. The other periscope's name escapes me but it was used when there was no stealth required. Another thing was that this particular submarine flew the jolly roger from it's conning tower. The reason for this being that the captain had overheard another higher ranking officer in the army (he didn't like submarines and their crewmen) talking about submariners in a mean manner and calling them 'pirates'. So as they came into port the flew the jolly roger and sank a ship which is now a dive wreck.
The tour was very interesting and left us feeling very hungry. So we headed to the museum cafe and bought lunch. I chose a roast beef salad sandwich and my sister chose a ham/ salad sandwich. Dad choses a salad Pannini. Mum chose an Arancini which is a risotto rice ball and it was quite big, about the size of a cricket ball.
Then we headed off to explore the other part of the museum. I saw the actual Australia 2 sailboat. It had won the America's Cup when no one except the Americans had ever won the race in over 100 years. There was also a boat that had a wheelhouse on top of the passenger area. I couldn't see the bow because of the passenger area's roof. It stretched for about two metres before the bow started. I went into the wheelhouse and checked myself.
After that we left the fascinating museum and drove to the Bell tower in the C.B.D. of Perth. It is 82 metres, 246 foot tall. Which is pretty high. It is made out of glass and offers some of the most spectacular views in Perth. Then we went shopping for dinner and Dad bought some doughnut balls for dessert. When we arrived back at the caravan Dad and I filled up the water tanks and then we went had a shower. The warm water was nice on the mozzie bites that I had gotten while we were filling up the water tanks on the caravan. After our shower Dad and I went back to the caravan and I started writing my blog. Then we had dinner. Dinner was two Chicken and Avocado sandwiches for me and chicken and rice and stir fried veggies for the rest of the family. Then I kept writing my blog until we could have dessert. Dessert was the doughnut balls and a glass of chocolate milk. Then I finished writing the blog and went to bed.
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