Doc opts for sea change
Volume 11, No. 49, August 10, 2006
By Capt Lachlan Simond

Busy: Ship’s medical officer Col Jeffery Brock examines a US sailor’s injured hand. Photo by AB Bradley Darvill

SOMEWHERE in the Persian Gulf there’s a bit of green that’s keeping the Navy healthy.

Army Reservist Col Jeff Brock is the ship’s medical officer for HMAS Ballarat. A former ARA officer for 26 years, Col Brock was offered the opportunity for a sea change when he was involved in the Sea King disaster BOI.

“I had to incorporate that work and the preparation to come to sea,” he said. “I had never been to sea before, other than one brief patrol on a submarine. It was all a novel experience.”

Col Brock joined HMAS Ballarat before the ship’s workup for deployment and experienced first hand the rigid levels of training expected of a ship before it deploys. He has found life on board HMAS Ballarat fairly hectic.

“We’ve been particularly busy with day to day illness,” he said. “We’ve also been very busy with medivacs, not only for our own crew but for personnel from other coalition missions, other ships, the oil platforms and in some cases Iraqi nationals from other ships.”

Col Brock said he had found plenty of common ground with his Navy counterparts. “It didn’t take very long for that can-do mentality to surface within the ship itself, and then from within the ship to the coalition forces.

We’ve found now that whenever something difficult is happening, especially in the medical arena and other missions, that we are the first cab off the rank.”