HMAS Hawkesbury (M 83)

HMAS Hawkesbury (M 83), named for the Hawkesbury River, is the second Huon-class minehunter to have been built for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN).

Hawkesbury was built by Australian Defence Industries in Newcastle, New South Wales, launched on 24 April 1998, and commissioned into the RAN on 12 February 2000. Hawkesbury is based at Sydney naval base HMAS Waterhen, along with the majority of the RAN's mine warfare assets.

Operational history
In May 2003, Hawkesbury and sister ship HMAS Yarra (M 87) were operating off the coast of Queensland on exercises. During this, the two ships were tasked with checking the believed location of the shipwreck of AHS Centaur, a hospital ship sunk off Moreton Island during World War II, following several media stories indicating that the wreck at this location might not be the hospital ship. These searches, followed up by the hydrographic survey ship HMAS Melville (A 246) a month later, found that the wreck had been incorrectly marked as Centaur since its discovery in 1995.

As of 2008, Hawkesbury and sister ship HMAS Huon (M 82) were taking turns supporting border security operations.

On the morning of 13 March 2009, Hawkesbury was one of seventeen warships involved in a ceremonial fleet entry and fleet review in Sydney Harbour, the largest collection of RAN ships since the Australian Bicentenary in 1988. The minehunter did not participate in the fleet entry, but was anchored in the harbour for the review.

By October 2011, Hawkesbury and sister ship HMAS Norman (M 84) had been placed into reserve, and the Australian Department of Defence predicted that it would take five years to bring both back to operational status and train personnel to run the vessels.