For the past ten weeks our oldest grand son (he will be twenty-one real soon) Kai Walden has been toiling away as a Recruit in the naval training establishment at HMAS Cerberus in Victoria. On December 11th 2025, that toiling came to a successful completion with his and 104 other recruits’ graduation parade.
We would have liked to go down for the parade (they reckon everyone loves a parade) but the seating was limited. Each recruit was permitted four seats in the audience and since there were three Waldens from Adelaide to attend on Kai’s behalf, we had to stay home. While it would have been good to be there, they live streamed the whole ceremony so we were able to sit in air conditioned comfort and watch on our lounge room TV.
It was a good show and very good PR for the Navy and all associated. It lasted for well over an hour and having done any number of “march out parades” as we used to call them, it is fortunate, given the heat, that they had only one recruit who need support.
Kai said that all of the training for the parade for the recruits happened in the last week. Given that there were lots of other things that had to happen in that week, I thought it was very impressive. We didn’t see any one marching out of step and everyone seemed to know where to go and when. And the band did a great job as well. One would expect that to be the case since it is part of their job.
At the completion of this parade, all of the Recruits became Seamen. Not sure what the females are called but I am sure they were all pleased to be over that period of their training.
Kai stays at HMAS Cerberus for the next period of his training as a submariner for the nuclear submarines Australia is purchasing from the USA. His understanding is that future training will include time in Perth where Australia’s submarines are based and then to the USA for training in their nuclear subs.
