HMAS Yarra (M 87) is the sixth Huon-class minehunter

Huon class minehunter

The Huon class Minehunter Coastal ships are a group of minehunters built for the Royal Australian Navy . Following problems with the Bay class minehunters, a request for tender was issued in 1993 for a class of six coastal minehunters under the project designation SEA 1555...

 to have been built for the Royal Australian Navy

Royal Australian Navy

The Royal Australian Navy is the naval branch of the Australian Defence Force. Following the Federation of Australia in 1901, the ships and resources of the separate colonial navies were integrated into a national force: the Commonwealth Naval Forces...

 (RAN) and the fourth warship to be named after the Yarra River

Yarra River

The Yarra River, originally Birrarung, is a river in east-central Victoria, Australia. The lower stretches of the river is where the city of Melbourne was established in 1835 and today Greater Melbourne dominates and influences the landscape of its lower reaches...

 in Victoria.

Yarra was built by Australian Defence Industries

Australian Defence Industries

Thales Australia is a primary defence contractor for the Australian Defence Force. Thales Australia is best known for its naval ship repair operations, and currently leases the Captain Cook graving dock at Garden Island Naval Base in Sydney, New South Wales and also leases and occupies many of the...

 in Newcastle, New South Wales

Newcastle, New South Wales

The Newcastle metropolitan area is the second most populated area in the Australian state of New South Wales and includes most of the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie Local Government Areas...

, launched on 19 January 2002, and commissioned into the RAN on 1 March 2003.

Yarra is based at HMAS Waterhen Naval Base

HMAS Waterhen (naval base)

HMAS Waterhen is a shore establishment of the Royal Australian Navy , located in Waverton, Sydney. Constructed on the site of a quarry used to expand Garden Island in the 1930s, the location was used during World War II as a boom net maintenance and storage area. In 1962, the area was commissioned...

 in Sydney, along with the majority of the RAN's mine warfare assets.

Operational history

In May 1993, Yarra and sister ship were operating off the coast of Queensland on exercises. During this, the two ships were tasked with checking the believed location of the shipwreck of AHS Centaur

AHS Centaur

Australian Hospital Ship Centaur was a hospital ship which was attacked and sunk by a Japanese submarine off the coast of Queensland, Australia, on 14 May 1943...

, a hospital ship sunk off Moreton Island during World War II, following several media stories indicating that the wreck at this location might not be the hospital ship. These searches, followed up by the hydrographic survey ship a month later, found that the wreck had been incorrectly marked as Centaur since its discovery in 1995.

Following the discovery by the survey ships , and , of a submerged object that corresponded to the dimensions of Australian submarine AE1

HMAS AE1

HMAS AE1 was an E-class submarine of the Royal Australian Navy . She was the first submarine to serve in the RAN, and was lost at sea with all hands near East New Britain, Papua New Guinea, on 14 September 1914, after less than seven months in service...

, which had disappeared off the coast of East New Britain

East New Britain

East New Britain is a province of Papua New Guinea, on the north-eastern part of the island of New Britain and it also includes the Duke of York Islands. The capital of the province is Kokopo, not far from the old capital of Rabaul, which was largely destroyed in the 1994 volcanic eruption...

 during World War I, Yarra was sent in June 2007 to confirm the findings. The object was found to be a submarine-shaped rock formation.

On the morning of 13 March 2009, Yarra was one of seventeen warships involved in a ceremonial fleet entry and fleet review in Sydney Harbour, the largest collection of RAN ships since the Australian Bicentenary

Australian Bicentenary

The bicentenary of Australia was celebrated in 1970 on the 200th anniversary of Captain James Cook landing and claiming the land, and again in 1988 to celebrate 200 years of permanent European settlement.-1970:...

in 1988. The minehunter was one of the thirteen ships involved in the ceremonial entry through Sydney Heads, and anchored in the harbour for the review.

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