As a teenage Stuart Goldfinch stood on the shore in Adelaide watching the Royal Yacht Britannia sail by in all her glory, a seed was planted in his mind.

"I thought that looks a good idea," he recalled.

Three years later, that seed would sprout into the 17-year-old joining the Royal Australian Navy; thus beginning a 30-year career that would see him serve three tours of the Middle East, two tours of East Timor, a 10-month deployment to the Middle East headquarters supporting operations in Afghanistan, "multiple goodwill deployments" and various peace monitoring missions.

Signing up as what was then known as a radar plot sailor, he reflected, it was partly a sense of duty, but mostly a sense of adventure.

Barely two years later, he was on HMAS Darwin helping escort merchant ships throug

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