Australia Station

The Australia Station was the British—and later Australian—naval command responsible for the waters around the Australian continent. It was under the command of the Commander-in-Chief, Australia.

History
In the early years following the establishment of the colony of New South Wales, ships based in Australian waters came under the control of the East Indies Squadron of the Royal Navy and from the 1820s, a ship was sent annually to New South Wales, and occasionally to New Zealand.

In 1848, an Australian Division of the East Indies Station was established. However in 1859 the British Admiralty established an independent command, the Australia Station, under the command of a commodore who was assigned as Commander-in-Chief, Australia Station. This decision was partially in recognition of the fact that a large part of the East Indies Station had been detached to Australian waters, while also reflecting growing concern for the strategic situation in the western Pacific in general, and in Tahiti and New Zealand in particular. Ships serving on the Station were assigned to the Australian Squadron. In 1884 the station was upgraded to a rear admiral's command.

At its establishment, the Australia Station encompassed Australia and New Zealand, with its eastern boundary including Samoa and Tonga, its western edge in the Indian Ocean, south of India and its southern edge defined by the Antarctic Circle. The boundaries were modified in 1864, 1872, 1893, and 1908. At its largest, the Australia Station reached from the Equator to the Antarctic in its greatest north-south axis, and covered one quarter of the Southern Hemisphere in its extreme east-west dimension, including Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Melanesia and Polynesia.

In 1913, the Australian Squadron was disbanded, and responsibility for the Station was handed over to the new Royal Australian Navy, at which time it covered Australia and its island dependencies to the north and east. At the same time it was reduced to exclude New Zealand and from then until 1921, when a separate New Zealand Station was established, New Zealand and its surrounds were part of the China Station. In 1958 the Australia Station was redrawn again, now including Papua New Guinea.

Commanders-in-Chief, Australia Station
The following is a list of the Royal Navy officers who occupied the post of Commander-in-Chief, Australia Station.

List of ships assigned to the Station
This is a list of ships that were assigned to the station between 1859 until 1913. The Australian Squadron was replaced by the Royal Australian Navy Fleet when it sailed into Sydney Harbour on 4 October 1913.