Ex HMAS Junee

The Ex HMAS Junee

The Ex HMAS Junee was one of sixty Australian Minesweepers (commonly known as corvettes) built during World War II in Australian shipyards as part of the Commonwealth Government’s wartime shipbuilding programme. Twenty were built on Admiralty order but manned and commissioned by the Royal Australian Navy. Thirty six (including Junee) were built for the Royal Australian Navy and four for the Royal Indian Navy.

HMAS Junee was laid down at Poole and Steel Ltd, Sydney, NSW on 27 February 1943. She was launched on 16 November 1943 by Mrs Rosevear, wife of the Speaker of the House of Representatives and was the first RAN warship to carry the name of a medium sized town in the Riverina region of NSW.

The Junee recommissioned as a training ship at Melbourne on 25 February 1953 under the command of Lieutenant Commander Cecil J Cochran RAN. She operated in eastern Australian waters until 12 August 1953, when she sailed from Melbourne for Fremantle. She was subsequently engaged mainly on training duties in western and north western Australian waters until 1957.

Thanks to Stevan Coll for this information: “In the models, you can see the two Admiralty Three-Drum, water tube boilers, maximum working pressure (from memory) 250psi. These boilers fed saturated steam to the two triple expansion steam engines (lower left), driving twin shafts and screws. The forced draught blowers and fuel pumps, also driven by steam, were reciprocating machinery (the Stokers called these ‘knee action turbines’). Obviously, the boilers were situated forward of the engine room. You can see the cylinder head coverings of the triple expansion engines in the left hand side of the photo. The boilers were fired with thick black furnace fuel oil (FFO). The RAN still had a couple of these Bathurst-class corvettes in service in early sixties and we gave a couple (HMAS LACHLAN & MURCHISON) to the Kiwi Navy as well. They were rugged little ships, armed with a four inch gun and used mainly for escort and anti-submarine duties in WW2. I never served in them, but learned a lot about them when I joined the Navy as a Stoker in 1963.”

On 18 June 1958 she was sold to Mr WG Davies of Fremantle. She was scrapped in 1968 and her hull sunk 20 miles west of Rottnest Island, Western Australia in 83m of water.

We dived The Junee on 22/12/22 as the first of our project dives. Measured as 82.2m deep on dive computers, we believe this is possibly the deepest Photogrammetry model of a wreck produced in Australian Waters. The image at the top of the page shows Andy with the camera rig followed by Gareth collecting data on The Junee.

This model, with reference to the information above, and in consultation with the advice from the WA Museum; positively identifies this wreck as the Ex HMAS Junee. This brings to an end years of community speculation as to whether the sites (wrecks) for The Junee and the Cape Otway had been mixed up.

3D Model
– Web Quality, so lacking a lot of detail, please ask us if you want a copy of the full model
– Click the expand icon on the model to rotate and zoom