Michael Apperley grew up in the Adelaide suburb of Tea Tree Gully. He and his 3 brothers served in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Michael joined at 15 and served for 21 years.
After enrolling in a junior recruit scheme in 1978, Michael did basic training at HMAS Leeuwin in Perth. Then he moved to Victoria to train at HMAS Cerberus on Victoria’s on the Mornington Peninsula.
Michael specialised in Stores Naval, learning supply logistics for land bases and ships at sea. The diverse naval supply chain spanned many commodities, from aircraft parts to basic foodstuffs. A key responsibility was to ensure ships were loaded correctly with all items accounted.
Many deployments at sea took Michael to South-East Asia and different parts of the Pacific. Many lasted between 4 and 6 months, and Michael reflected on them fondly as a ‘bit of an adventure’.
In the 1990s, Michael had the opportunity to join a peace operation to Somalia. At the time, he was Chief Petty Officer working as an accounting officer at HMAS Penguin in Sydney. He had not been to Africa and did not fully understand the situation in Somalia. However, he had heard news about the Unified Task Force (UNITAF), codenamed Operation Restore Hope.
Michael successfully applied to serve with one of the Australian contingents, codenamed Operation Solace. After pre-embarkation training at Randwick, he was one of a few RAN personnel attached to the multi-service contingent of about 40 personnel that arrived in Somalia in 1993.
The journey to Somalia was long. The contingent flew to Perth and then Harare in Zimbabwe, and to Nairobi in Kenya the next day. They spent a couple of days acclimatising and planning before boarding a United Nations charter flight to Mogadishu in Somalia.
Michael’s first impression of Mogadishu was the extent of its destruction – it seemed completely destroyed. He quickly became aware of a state of unchecked lawlessness, describing it as ‘basically in Dodge City … like the Wild West’. The experience was confronting, but the Australians coped by focusing on the work to be done.
Somalia was not an easy deployment. The Australians were under constant threat of attack, when moving through the streets and when operating in their compound. Michael said ‘a lot of brave folks’ were involved and they worked well together to conduct a successful operation.
