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Thales Garden Island in New South Wales

Since 1857, Garden Island had been the base of the Royal Navy's Australia Station and by the turn of the 20th century was well-established as a naval dockyard. In 1912, the Garden Island dockyard was transferred to the control of the Commonwealth Naval Board and the following year, the Admiralty handed over the island's buildings to the Commonwealth government. The dockyard was used extensively during World War 1 for the repair of naval vessels and during the early 1920s for the refit of the British-built 'J class' submarine. In the 1940s, a naval graving dock was built on the island to enable fast refit and repair of naval vessels in Australia. Previously, many vessels needed to travel to Singapore for repair. With the fall of Singapore in 1942 and ongoing construction work at Cockatoo Island, a dry dock at Garden Island became a strategic imperative. When the Captain Cook Graving Dock opened in 1945, at a cost higher than the outlay on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Garden Island was established as the most important ship repair facility in Australia.

The New South Wales government noted that there are two existing facilities with the capacity 'to host work on large naval vessels' — Captain Cook Dry Dock in Garden Island and the Cairncross shipyard in Brisbane. Mr Warwick Glenn, New South Wales Department of State and Regional Development, said that the Captain Cook Dry Dock is 'ideally positioned at the fleet base — near naval personnel, accessible to Canberra and close to Defence ICT systems hub of North Ryde, which offers support for electronics components of modern ships.

Although in Commonwealth hands, the Garden Island Dockyard in Sydney is operated under lease by ADI Ltd (now Thales). The yard is used mainly for repair and maintenance of major surface ships and upgrade of the FFGs. The site has a dry dock 100 000 dwt capacity, 345 metre x 41.6 metre and a floating dock 800 dwt capacity, 63 metre x 12.9 metre. According to the 2002 Australian naval shipbuilding strategic plan, the dry dock is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and capable of servicing very large ships of foreign navies. It was of the view that the site 'as a whole would require significant investment to convert to consolidation of vessels planned under SEA4000, JP2048/2027 or SEA1654'.

The 2002 ASPI report was of the view that, although its key capabilities relate to the repair sector, it could be used for the construction of large ship modules. It noted, however, that while the Captain Cook Dry Dock could be used to assemble modules, this activity would disrupt its repair and maintenance dockings.

Existing facilities on the eastern sea board have been in place for many years. The history of Garden Island as a facility before ADI was a privatised company is that it was a heavy engineering facility where anything was possible. That has changed for obvious reasons. There are environmental pressures on the site. Having said that, however, what we can do are essentially…major cutting, major refabrication within the ship, putting in new capabilities and so forth. If there is some aspect of that work that is noisier, dirtier or whatever than what is possible under the licence regime then we get that done somewhere else and bring the finished product into the facility where they then install it in the ship.

ADI have partners in the bid for the LHDs including Forgacs, an engineering company based in Newcastle that has facilities in Newcastle and Brisbane. Between ADI; Forgacs; the French designer-shipbuilder partner, Amaris; and other strategic subcontractors, ADI does not envisage any constraints in undertaking the LHD program.