THE HMAS AUSTRALIA BEAR

Able (Bodied) Seaman Andy Miller represents the crucial role played by the Royal Australian Navy during the Great War 1914-1918. AB Miller holds the lowest rank possible for a proficient sailor of the Royal Australian Navy during the Great War. This rank was chosen in order to represent the valiant and outstanding service of all navy personnel, regardless of rank, who confronted the harsh conditions and often a terrible fate on the high seas.

The navy played a vital role in transporting and supplying the Anzacs from the outset of war. Australian ships and submarines fought several major engagements with the enemy as the Great War unfolded. But above all her crews won renown and respect for the Australian flag upon oceans of the world. Banjo Paterson, who travelled with naval convoys during the Great War, references the heroism of the Australian Navy, including the heroic battleship HMAS Sydney, in his famous Great War poem “We’re All Australians Now”:

Our six-starred flag that used to fly
Half-shyly to the breeze,
Unknown where older nations ply
Their trade on foreign seas,

Flies out to meet the morning blue
With Vict'ry at the prow;
For that's the flag the Sydney flew,
The wide seas know it now!

The mettle that a race can show
Is proved with shot and steel,
And now we know what nations know
And feel what nations feel.

AB Miller represents the ordinary, and in many cases extraordinary, Australian sailor. He wears the Number 1 Dress Blue Serge Uniform with blue seaman's jumper and blue Class II cap as worn by crew on-board H.M.A.S. Australia (I) serving as flagship of the 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadron in the Northern Hemisphere from 1915.

The uniform includes the white lanyard used in the war to secure the seaman's knife, and the scarf which unfolded to a large multi-purpose cloth. He wears a single chevron on the left sleeve to recognise three years long service and good conduct, and on the right sleeve has his 'cuff rate' indicating he qualified as a Marksman 2nd Class.