Such amphibious craft were once a familiar sight around Port Stephens and its southern shores, often around October, over decades.

Such memories seem hard to believe these days because the area is so built up and the beaches so congested. But as today's rare picture, taken almost 50 years ago, shows, the "Australian Army's Navy" once used beaches, like at Shoal Bay and elsewhere, fairly regularly for military exercises.

Believe it or not, the picture shows at least four landing craft about to disgorge men and heavy equipment at popular Little Beach below the Inner Light around from Nelson Bay. The picture is dated October 30, 1972, when much of the sandy foreshore was heavily timbered and not crowded with holiday apartments and recreational fishermen as it is today.

The Halifax Park camping park below Nelson Head is out of sight behind bush at far right and the boat ramp doesn't seem to have yet been built.

But all our defence forces were doing was re-using a location which had been used since way back about 1942. Why, an historic wartime photo even exists somewhere of a Matilda tank then rolling off a beached landing craft probably at Shoal Bay.

That's when HMAS Assault, the RAN training centre, existed in the district during World War II. And it's where 20,000 US soldiers and about 2000 Aussies were trained in simulated invasions (beach attacks) on future Pacific Island strongholds held by the then enemy Japanese.

Shoal Bay and nearby Zenith, Wreck and Box beaches and probably the ocean side of Fingal Spit were used for practice amphibious landings.

In October 1943, there were an estimated 141 ships and landing craft based at Port Stephens, but when the war later ended, the township reverted to a sleepy fishing hamlet. But the area was still very useful for military purposes, initially as a Royal Marine Commando depot.

Australians doing national service were later billeted at the local Gan Gan Army Base in February 1960. Landing craft were soon using Shoal Bay beach again in October 1962 to bring heavy equipment ashore for exercises. The same thing happened in March 1963 for exercise 'Autumn Tide' involving Citizen Military Forces (CMF) units from Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

It wasn't unusual, either, to see the smaller, six-wheel drive amphibious 'Army Ducks' at sea exercising around Port Stephens right through the 1960s and into the 1970s.

The proposed Tomaree Museum recently even gave a public preview online of some of its archive treasures in pictures by Brian Clulow. They showed an operation by the 32nd Small Ships Squadron of the Royal Australian Engineers back in the 1960s landing troops, again at Little Beach, near Nelson Bay.

The large vessel involved then was AV Harry Chauvel, one of four World War II US Navy landing craft bought by the Australian Navy in 1959. It was bought primarily to move 54-tonne Centurion tanks from their base in Puckapunyal, Victoria.

A similar large landing craft, AV 1354, allegedly going by the fantastical name of 'Horatio J. Kookaburra', also apparently visited Port Stephens in 1964. I'm told it remained in service until the early 1970s. Such vessels also moved men, vehicles and stores overseas, making voyages to remote coastal locations in New Guinea, New Zealand, Malaysia and Vietnam on Australian Army duty.

But now back to today's rare picture taken at Little Beach in 1972. Perhaps it was even one of the last of such maritime operations as the area was fast becoming a popular tourist destination. Such smaller LCM8 (landing craft medium) boats are now based at Townsville, I believe.

The landing craft, AB 1056, (closest to the camera) is listed as being the whimsically named 'Charlie Brown. Close by is AB 1055 which carried the moniker of 'Midnight Sun'. Others of their class had names like (can you believe) 'Coconut Queen' and 'Seahorse 2'.

Today, they're probably all long retired from active service and now form part of the Hunter's forgotten history.

ALSO READ: Port's war history can still be seen today

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: