Mark Povey joined the Royal Australian Navy as a 16-year-old in 1977. He spent 12 months training at HMAS Leeuwin in Western Australia before being sent to HMAS Cerberus on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, where he undertook his basic Storeman's course. Then he was posted to HMAS Watson in Sydney.
Mark went to sea in 1980, spending 15 months on a destroyer escort, sailing to Noumea and Vila and around Australia, after which he was sent to the Royal Naval College at HMAS Creswell.
Mark had been at sea since 1990 before returning to HMAS Cerberus in 1993. While there, he heard volunteers were needed for Somalia and that a senior storeman – the job he was then doing – was required for the contingent. So on Anzac Day in 1994, he boarded a plane to Sydney and started 3 weeks pre-embarkation training at Randwick. In May 1994, he flew to Africa as part of the Australian contingent to the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM II).
The journey took him from Sydney to Perth to Harare in Zimbabwe, then to Nairobi and Mombasa in Kenya, where he next boarded a UN C-130 Hercules bound for Mogadishu airport in Somalia.
Mark was attached to a contingent based in a university compound, which they dubbed ‘Anzac House’. Mark had to liaise regularly with the seaport for supplies and occasionally travelled out of country to collect supplies from Mombasa in Kenya. His deployment was for 6 months and he returned home in November 1994.
