By ANNA USHER

A Mosman headland has been placed on the same hallowed ground as Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance and Sydney’s Cenotaph – formally declared one of just nine Military Memorials of National Significance in Australia.

The Bradleys Head Naval Memorials, where every warship entering Sydney Harbour must render a salute, received the federal designation this week as Australia marks 125 years of Royal Australian Navy service.

It is only the ninth time in the nation’s history the honour has been bestowed – and the first for a naval memorial that commands a physical salute from passing ships.

Nine memorials. Eighteen years of declarations. And Mosman is on the list.

Mosman Council welcomed the announcement, calling Bradleys Head “the only naval memorial in Australia where all passing Australian and foreign naval vessels must render ceremonial honours when entering or leaving Sydney Harbour.”

The reaction from locals was immediate. “Always a proud moment in the RAN entering and leaving harbour past Bradleys,” wrote Graeme White on Mosman Council’s Facebook page.

What stands at Bradleys Head

Located within Sydney Harbour National Park, the memorials centre on the mast of HMAS Sydney (I) – the first Australian ship to engage the enemy at sea.
On 9 November 1914, HMAS Sydney (I) defeated the German light cruiser SMS Emden off the Cocos Islands in one of the opening engagements of World War I. Four Australians were killed, along with 134 German sailors.

For Mosman local Roslyn Slade, the memorial is personal. Her father, Cecil Charles Turner – service number 5555 – served aboard HMAS Sydney (I) during World War I, spending Christmas Day 1917 in a Southend hospital with pleurisy.

“Always honour this memorial,” she wrote on Council’s Facebook page this week. “Lovely memories and stories.”

When the ship was decommissioned in 1928, its mast was removed and erected at Bradleys Head in 1934. The site also includes the Royal Australian Navy Memorial and the RAN Memorial Walk.

The memorials carry a second, heavier weight – the single greatest loss of life in the Royal Australian Navy’s history.

On 19 November 1941, HMAS Sydney (II) was sunk off the coast of Western Australia during close-range combat with the heavily disguised German auxiliary cruiser HSK Kormoran.

None of the 645 men aboard survived.

Commemorative services honouring the crews of both Sydneys – and all Navy personnel who have served in peace and war -continue to be held at Bradleys Head to this day.