Ahoy - Mac's Web Log

In Melbourne is a retail hobby outlet: Victorian Hobby Centre, with whom I have been quite friendly over several years, it was one of their staff Darryl, who had asked me to try and identify the four County Class Cruisers in a photograph he loaned me. This photograph is up on our Ahoy site, and has attracted attention from several sites around the world including correspondents from both Italy and Poland.

About two weeks ago, the Centre telephoned me to say thay had obtained a scale model of my old ship HMAS Canberra, ( I had been sunk in her at the Battle of Savo Island on the 9th. of august in 1942. ) They knew that I had been looking for such a model for many years. I asked if this model was of Russian origin, as I had been aware of such a model being offered for sale on the ebay site, and we had put a note about it up on Ahoy. Mac's Web Log.

The answer was yes, I asked if they would hold this model for me, as I was not too mobile after having an arthroscope recently on my left knee. To my query about how many of copies of this model did the Hobby Centre have, the response was only one.

I called at the Hobby Centre on Easter Saturday, this scale model is a 700 to 1, and appears to be a nice clean mould, but any instructions are in Russian, with but a line sketch of all the parts available to assemble it.

On the box is a photograph of Canberra, which was taken as we sailed out of Wellington, New Zealand, bound for "Operation WatchTower" landings, in the Solomon Islands, and that fateful night of the 9th. of August 1942, when Canberra was sunk, alongside our American Allies, USS Quincy, USS Astoria and USS Vincennes.

There is no way that I am competent enough to put this model together from the paucity of assembly instructions, but Jim Black, one of the Hobby Centre people has agreed to put it all together, and paint this model in Canberra's last colours for me at a reasonable cost. So, I await its assembly, when it will join a model of USS Blue,( the American destroyer that rescued me from the doomed and burning HMAS Canberra, on the morning of the 9th. of August 1942.) on the shelves of my library.

When it rests there, I will use our digital camera to record both ships, and put that photograph up on our web site. My search for such a model at last realised.