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I'm Leading *** Russ Hinze.
I'm a hydrographic systems operator and a buffer on board
HMAS Mermaid.
The hydrographic role is quite different from the majority of
every other branch in the Navy.
We will generally be surveying every day.
We'll get a order to say, OK, this
area needs to be surveyed.
And then we'll get the ship ready.
Off we go, and then generally be about three months at sea
on a normal trip.
We utilise multibeam echosounders to get pictures
of the bottom.
I guess people describe it as mowing the grass.
I mean, you're just going up and down, generally areas that
have never been surveyed before, so you're finding rigs
that haven't been charted, sometimes wrecks
and things like that.
So it can be quite exciting.
Not everybody has this type of job where we just go and work
in remote parts of the country that no one will ever go to.
You just find yourself on these random little islands in
the middle of, say, the Torres Strait, and just camping there
a couple nights.
Overseas-wise, I've been to Singapore, to Noumea, and been
to Polynesia, the Solomon Islands, all around Australia.
There's currently a team down in Antarctica doing some work
at the moment, so we get to go to some pretty cool places.
When you come back, you get a bit of downtime to take
holidays and go see family and stuff.
I guess I see myself in the future just progressing
through the ranks.
There's always that opportunity to do something
different in the Navy.
You're not really going to get tied down into one spot.
Once you've done your basic training, you're pretty much
up here in cans going out at sea and living the good life.