THE ill-fated submarine HMAS Otama 'celebrates' an unwanted birthday this month – eight long years since it arrived in Western Port to great excitement as the proposed centrepiece of a naval memorial park in Hastings.
In the years since, the project has met more opposition than the 2000 British soldiers facing 20,000 Zulu warriors at Rourke's Drift in 1879.
The Oberon class sub has languished on a mooring off the Crib Point jetty ever since, rust eating away at its outer hull, although not its crucial 25millimetre-thick pressure hull.
Western Port Oberon Association spokesman Max Bryant, a key driver of the project, says the submarine was meant to revitalise the town and had the backing of Mornington Peninsula Shire, but the Department of Sustainability and Environment and Parks Victoria scuppered the Hastings plan.
The association had high hopes the 2000-tonne, 90-metre sub and adjacent visitors' centre would attract 50,000 visitors a year to the foreshore. "More than $40 million of revenue has been lost," Mr Bryant said.
The association bought the Otama for $55,000 from the Royal Australian Navy in 2002 and spent $300,000 towing it from WA to Western Port. The association won a federal government Centenary of Federation grant of $500,000 but the money has been spent on the purchase, towing, mooring, maintenance and setting up of a museum and maritime memorial centre in the former BP administration centre at Crib Point, near where the sub is moored. Alternative plans to bring Otama ashore in Crib Point were abandoned by WPOA when the state government gave Boral permission to build a bitumen storage plant next to the site earmarked for the submarine.
Mr Bryant said Tourism Minister Tim Holding told the association the submarine and its centre could happily co-exist with the bitumen plant. "We thought he was joking," Mr Bryant said.
Plan C to bring the sub ashore at Stony Point had received in-principle support from authorities but delaying this move is the proposed car ferry to Phillip Island and Patrick Ports holding a lease on land needed for the sub until 2017. Last week Mr Bryant told The Mail the association was "still talking" to Frankston Council about taking the Otama to Frankston and to the shire council about Stony Point.
A Queensland consortium had also made the association an offer and wanted to take Otama to Cairns. Mr Bryant would not say how much had been offered but it was "less than what we had on it for eBay".
The association attracted worldwide interest in the submarine in November 2008 when it advertised Otama on eBay for $4.9million. It received four genuine offers including one from a group aiming to restore the Otama for use as a drug-smuggling submarine.
The Otama is intact and missing only its torpedoes and the weapons system used to fire them.
Mr Bryant said the eight-year saga had taken its toll on WPOA members: "In the early days we had 500 members but now we have just 200."
He conceded rust had damaged Otama's hull. "The eight years in Western Port means the restoration process will be that much harder. It might be easier to replace parts of the hull rather than remove rust."
■ Otama is a northern Queensland Aboriginal word for 'dolphin'.
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