When I was still in the Navy (I retired from active duty in 2001) I was assigned to USS Constellation, CV64 our first port of call was Sydney, NSW, Australia. Normally, west coast ships stop at Pearl Harbor for gas and groceries, but a change was made to our trajectory, probably so we could all get on with our Persian Gulf Summer Holiday sooner.  I'd been in the Navy 16 years, made two previous Western Pacific deployments (WESTPACs) " Gulf War 1", but never made it to Oz.  Until now.

   In April 1997, I arrived in Aussie waters with about 17 good friends and 6000+ other "squids". A lucky few of us who had confirmed visitors awaiting us in Sydney got to be shot off the ship on the cargo plane via catapult - a DEFINITE "E" ticket ride - 0-160 knots in two seconds!  Yeeehaw! Best of all, I got to hit the beach before those 6000+ other ship-riders did, which is very important when traveling with a battle group of 5 to 7 ships including the carrier.

    Pam flew ahead from San Diego for a three week holiday in Sydney and just happened to be there when I made landfall at the Sydney airport. Unfortunately, I had only four days in Sydney before the heavy and heavily-armed cruise liner was to steam west to Perth/Fremantle. Pam and I hoofed, railed, drove and loafed our way around Sydney, the Blue Mountains and surrounding areas. During the wandering Pam scouted out where a band she'd heard of called "Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts" was playing.  Huh?  Who the hell is that? What a stupid name! She filled me in and well,  I was skeptical. I told her if they sucked there was no way I was going to a second show. Then again, she'd talked to Russell for like 15 minutes many months before we traveled down there, but that's a whole other story!

    The first time we saw the Grunts was at the Coogee Beach pub. We stood around with about 18 people, a few were listening, a few drooling before RC, a few more at tables, others playing darts, semi-oblivious. Instead of hauling around my entire old camera bag, I'd brought only a auto-everything little 35mm camera which, unbeknownst to me, developed severe myopia during our hikes. (Those are the three totally crappy shots down at the bottom. Look at them and pretend you're not wearing your glasses)

    I'd never heard of the band, didn't know their music, had seen Russell Crowe in the "The Quick and The Dead" and "Virtuosity." The song "What's Her Name?" caught my ear. The set was short, the sound bad in that acoustically eh? bar, but I was interested enough to check them out the next night at Rozelle.  This time I brought along my trusty old Canon A-1 and Vivitar 70-210mm zoom.

    Since we were attentive, showed genuine interest  the previous night, (and perhaps because I invited them on a personal tour of the carrier) "Drummer Dave" Kelly put us on the access list for the next night's Rozelle show. When Pam and I got there, gave our name at the door and walked in, there were Dave and Russell setting up. I asked Russell if they minded me taking pictures with a flash occasionally: "Sure mate, shoot all you want."  Very cool.  Shoot away I did.  It was a warm and sticky night, but it was the last gig of their round-Oz tour promoting  "What's Her Name?"

    Kickin' show and we got to chat with the band afterwards. Very cool, that's me, the tall geeky guy in the purple shirt with Bruno, Dave Kelly, Garth and Dean. The next day Pam assisted me in giving the blokes in the band a guided tour of the Constellation, sans Russell who was late. He tried to call but cell phone signals didn't penetrate steel bulkheads very well.  Everyone was very well-behaved except Dean - he insisted on crawling into an F-14's engine air intake combing, which I hauled him out of; Pam had to drag him out of an H-2 helicopter. Just a bunch of kids.