Valerie and Frank at Whiskey A Go Go

Frank Syaranamual is a member of the City of Penrith RSL sub-Branch, currently Secretary/Treasurer, and Life Member of the Nepean Blue Mountains Subsection of the Naval Association of Australia. He is the recipient of the Naval Association of Australia’s highest honour, the Meritorious Service Medal. He is also Treasurer and Volunteer Guide for the Nepean Naval and Maritime Museum Inc. and a Life Member and former Treasurer of the Parents Committee of the TS Nepean Naval Reserve Cadets.

Frank joined the Nepean Blue Mountains Subsection of the Naval Association of Australia in 1984, was elected President in 1987, and became State Vice President in 1989.

Frank is also a Freemason and is currently active in The Craft ( joined 1991), The Royal Arch (1993), Knights Templar / Knights of Malta (1997), and Royal Order of Scotland (2009). He is currently inactive in the Order of Secret Monitor (2001) and Ancient and Accepted Rite for Scotland (2002)

Born in Fitzroy (VIC) in 1943, Frank had an almost immediate calling to the Armed Services, destined to follow in the footsteps of his father Anton Victor Willem Syaranamual, who was a pilot in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesian) Air Force, operating from Australia, when he met and married Frank’s mother.

Frank joined the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) in January 1961 as an Electrical Mechanic Weapons Electronics and was posted to the Aircraft Carrier HMAS Melbourne in October 1961. 

Frank’s life would be thrown into turmoil on 10th February 1964 when he was serving on HMAS Melbourne on the night it collided at sea with HMAS Voyager, resulting in the sinking of Voyager and loss of 82 crew, including Frank’s younger brother Anton, who was posted to Voyager in December 1963 from Recruit School.

It is almost unfathomable to comprehend the additional grief among the Syaranamual family to not only have the two brothers involved in the same Naval incident, let alone lose one of them in the process.

Frank’s life was never the same from that moment, later receiving a “Free Discharge” in September 1964 and thus effectively having lost both his career and a much-loved brother.

“I was in a pretty bad way,” said Frank. “Fortunately for me, my girlfriend Valerie (now my wife) who had met Anton before we sailed from Sydney, saved my life by agreeing to marry me a month after my discharge.

“I was fortunate,” said Frank.
“I got a job as soon as I left the Navy, working for National Cash Register, converting accounting machines, cash registers, etc to decimal currency.

“I did that for nearly two years, before moving to Rank Xerox in 1966, where I quickly became a Senior Engineer, servicing Copying Machines, High Speed Duplicators, and the first fax machines. 

Rank Xerox moved him and his family to Sydney as a Training Instructor at the National Training Centre in Artarmon, living in West Ryde. “I had a great incentive, as by then our family had increased by four children,” Frank said. In 1972, he resigned from Rank Xerox following a breakdown brought on by the treatment of returning Vietnam Veterans.

He later re-joined Rank Xerox in 1973 as a Senior Engineer. In 1974, he was selected to go with a team to the Christchurch NZ Commonwealth Games to service the first fully automatic results system, which copied the results and faxed them from the venue to the distribution centres. 

Later that year, he was promoted to District Service Manager, and in 1977 was appointed as National Data Centre Manager. 

He recalls Rank Xerox’s Honeywell 2040 mainframe computer memory was a now-archaic 96 kb, with a 12 kb Operating System, located in Redfern, and required 18 female Data entry operators to punch in the billing data sent each month by courier from all over Australia onto tape, to be read by the Computer, and converted to Invoices and Statements, which was a 48 hour process. 

The Mainframe Computer was upgraded in 1980 to an IBM 370/138 with 1mb of memory, requiring construction of a new computer centre in 1979, built on the 24th floor of the AGL building in North Sydney, with magnificent prime views from his office of Sydney Harbour. With Distributed Online Data processing being implemented, within three years this computer was upgraded to a Desktop IBM with 4mb of memory.

Frank and Valerie moved to Cambridge Gardens in 1976 and have four children; Anton, Lisa, Douglas and Gregory (now deceased), with the family now extending to 5 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.

In 1981, he was hired by James Hardie Industries Limited, as Group Computer Operations Manager, responsible for the main Corporate Computer Centres, and integrating Computer Hardware and Systems as well as Data Security. The Company was in a major diversification program due to its main business of asbestos based products being halted, and by 1986, had five major operational divisions.

In 1984, Frank had attended a 20th Anniversary of the Melbourne/Voyager collision in Sydney where he caught up with a couple of former shipmates and renewed his interest in the Navy. 

Frank’s son Gregory later announced he wanted to join the Naval Reserve Cadet Unit TS Nepean, which met at the old Waterboard Pumping station between the Log Cabin and the road/rail bridge crossing the Nepean River to Emu Plains.

Frank went with him and met a few more former shipmates from HMAS Melbourne and the Naval Association. He was told the Association was trying to build a permanent base for the Naval Cadet Unit, and in 1981, Penrith Council had granted a lease on a block of land adjacent to the railway line and the Rowing Club for the creation of the Naval Cadet Unit. At their urging, he joined the Nepean Blue Mountains Sub-Section of the Naval Association of Australia, and the Penrith RSL sub-Branch.

Frank first laid eyes on the block in 1984 and decided to support their efforts, being elected as Chairman of the Building Committee. The building was finally opened by Rear Admiral A.R. Horton A.M. Flag Officer Commanding Eastern Australia in June 1988., and the Cadet Unit moved in..

Frank became a Freemason in Lodge Nepean – Orchard Hills in 1991.

He is an Honorary Member of the Voyager Survivors Association (based in Huskisson, NSW).

He continues to support the Naval Association, and is active in the City of Penrith RSL sub-Branch, assisting in providing the Naval Tribute for Naval funerals.

Frank and Valerie have both received their OBE’s (Over Bloody Eighty) medals and they celebrated 60 years of marriage on Thursday 24th October.

More information and details on the Voyager tragedy can be found in the book “Where Fate Calls (1992)” and on Youtube “Unfit to Command” and “HMAS Voyager 4 Corners”.

There have also been two Royal Commissions on the disaster, declaring the Captain of the Voyager was unfit to command.

Frank Syranamual was nominated as a Legend of the Nepean by Peter Ward, City of Penrith RSL sub-Branch.
If you know a local legend, send us a nomination at nepeannews@aol.com