From the Director’s Desk

RAN BAND NEWS EDITION NUMBER 15 12 DECEMBER 2009

DEPARTING SYDNEY AT PROCEDURE ALFA ONBOARD HMAS DARWIN

FROM THE DIRECTOR’S DESK

As we come to the end of another busy six month period it is appropriate to reflect upon our achievements. It is evident, from the various articles in this edition of RAN Band News, that we have once again demonstrated our impressive capability (ashore and afloat) and excellence as an organisation that delivers high quality ceremonial, musical and public relations services to the Royal Australian Navy. During this period we welcomed back to Australia 12 musicians who were embarked in HMAS Sydney for Northern Trident and two of our people who were on exchange with Her Majesty’s Royal Marine Band Service. We embarked another six musicians in HMAS Darwin for a high profile series of port visits to Sea East Asia and deployed small technical teams to the Solomon Islands and East Timor. We also commenced a recording project (Our Soloists) that is intended to showcase our many superb specialists, and completed the studio recording phase for the next compact disc, All Hands on Deck: This recording, which features tracks from each detachment, is currently in the final stages of editing and should be available for release early next year. In and amongst all of these important tasks we managed to complete more than 200 missions throughout Australia reaching many thousands of people in a direct manner and hundreds of thousands through indirect media exposure. Our detachments visited numerous regional centres outside of their capital city locations; including, Albany in Western Australia, Cairns, Caloundra and Meandarra in Queensland, Darwin in the Northern Territory, Eden and Newcastle in New South Wales, Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, Morgan, Mt Gambier and Jamestown in South Australia, and Portland and Bendigo in Victoria.