MANY ships are named after towns, but few towns have been named after ships.
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Or so the old saying goes.
And in the case of one Lake Macquarie suburb, it's very true.
Take, for example, Tingira Heights, originally known as Violet Town, where houses only really began to spring up in the 1960s.
Land for the proposed new 'Violet Township' was surveyed as far back as 1887, but the area's remoteness proved a drawback.
Then, just as the place was finally getting established, came another problem.
The lake suburb had to change its name.
That was in 1965. Someone had discovered (shock, horror!) there was a township with the same name in far-off Victoria.
The Violet Town Progress Association then called for suggestions for a new name and along came the HMAS Tingira Old Boys Association.
Its members asked for the name of their old naval ship to be commemorated.
It seemed a fitting tribute as former boys (once as young as 14 years old) had trained as navy personnel.
Many had then served in either one of two world wars, or in Korea.
The name 'Tingira' was a Queensland Aboriginal word meaning 'open sea', very appropriate considering views from the suburb's hilly coastal location.
So, the progress association took a vote 54 years ago this month, on May 12, 1965, to adopt the new suburban name of Tingira.
It came, however, with the proviso the word 'Heights' be added.
To preserve another piece of history, Violet Town Road (Tingira Heights) today still recalls the suburb's original name.
And HMAS Tingira (1912-1941/42) has every right to be remembered. It was, after all, the nation's first naval training ship.
The former famous, three-masted sailing ship was then moored at Sydney's Rose Bay for 15 years until being decommissioned (in 1927) and eventually scrapped.
HMAS Tingira has every right to be remembered. It was, after all, the nation's first naval training ship.
It almost disappeared from memory then after being totally destroyed.
Or was it?
For Tingira had some major claims to fame.
One of which is that it was the world's largest composite-hull vessel (teak planking over an iron frame).
In a previous life, before being renamed HMAS Tingira, the ship was a famous clipper renowned for its speed and luxury passenger accommodation on the Great Britain-Australia run for an impressive 24 years.
The clipper was even compared favourably to more famous ships like Thermopolae and the Cutty Sark.
Built in Scotland in 1866 and called Sobraon, the vessel had an overall length of 317ft (96.6metres) with a displacement of 2131 tons.
On arrival in the port of Sydney on its maiden voyage in February 1867, the Sobraon was described as the largest ship to ever enter Sydney Harbour.
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The ship frequently covered 2000 nautical miles a week. Average voyages across the world to Australia were three months, but Sobraon once had a very fast voyage of 68 days.
Sobraon was a sleek, fast, reliable passenger clipper until 1891, but there was a serious problem on at least one occasion.
There were reports of the windjammer arriving at the wrong port in England because the ship's large metal hull interfered with its compass.
And what about the ship's curious name?
Well, it harked back to the glory days of the old British Empire.
The ship was named after the Battle of Sobraon fought between East India Company forces and a Sikh army in the Punjab, India, in February 1846.
By 1891, times were changing and steamships were replacing old sail vessels.
That same year, the NSW Premier Henry Parkes bought the Sobraon as a future floating reformatory to replace the ageing, leaking, wooden sailing ship Vernon moored off Sydney Harbour's Cockatoo Island.
The retired passenger clipper then became NSS (or nautical school ship) Sobraon from 1891 to 1911 and never went to sea again.
Delinquent boys between seven and 14 years were sent by Sydney magistrates to serve time aboard the moored vessel, to learn a trade and remove them from moral danger on city streets.
Boys sent there had either been found to be vagrant or begging. Most wayward boys went on to become good citizens, tradesmen, even good sailors.
The Commonwealth Government then stepped in 1911 to take over the Sobraon for use as a naval training ship and renamed it HMAS Tingira.
The vessel was converted for its new use and moved from Cockatoo Island to Rose Bay in 1912.
Detainee boys from the old Sobraon industrial ship were moved onshore, first to Eastwood, NSW, then to a farm at what became Mount Penang, Gosford.
The 'new' training ship Tingira, in its striking white livery, then produced thousands of young sailors, many serving with distinction in the newly formed Royal Australian Navy.
Finally, in 1927, after 61 years of continuous service, HMAS Tingira/Sobraon was finally decommissioned. By then, about 3168 boys had had their initial naval training on board on top of perhaps 3000 under-privileged boys trained earlier.
The ship's new owner, a boat builder named W.M.Ford, then had it moved in 1929 to his harbourside yard at Berrys Bay, on Sydney's North Shore.
Ford died in 1935 and a later bid to buy Tingira as a floating museum failed.
The former Tingira, decaying in the mud at Berrys Bay, was then broken up, down to the waterline, on site in 1941-42.
The only apparent lasting link with the historic training ship today is the small Tingira Memorial Park on Sydney's Rose Bay waterfront.
But a ship's bell marked 'Sobraon' ended up in a South Coast museum and trainees at W.A's Fremantle naval training base HMAS Leeuwin from 1960-1984 wore 'Tingira' shoulder flashes to honour the memory of the RAN's first training ship.
(By co-incidence, the initial captain of HMAS Tingira was Commander Lewin RN.)
And there the story might seem to end, except for a modern magnetometer survey into HMAS Tingira's fate only a few years ago.
Conducted at Berrys Bay by maritime archaeologists from the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) and the Silentworld Foundation, it seemed to indicate part of the old ship is incredibly still there.
Dr James Hunter, museum curator, RAN Maritime Archaeology, reported the possible presence of Tingira's surviving hull.
Unidentified remnants there are "virtually identical" in length and beam.
This provided "compelling evidence" the stripped ship depicted in 1943 aerial site photographs never left, but was intentionally grounded in the mud flat and abandoned.
Reclamation activities at the site in 1960 replaced the mud flat with Waverton Park, created by discharging silt there from Sydney Harbour dredging.
Today, it's speculated the Tingira's forward half may be buried beneath the park while "the remainder could be located" beneath shallows in a tidal zone.
Further investigation is needed as the large anomaly on Tingira's old mooring site is surrounded by several modern magnetic sources.
Only time will tell what's buried there, but with Dr James Hunter's help the truth will be revealed.
Years ago, Dr Hunter was a member of the archaeological team probing the remains of the once lost US Civil War submersible H.L. Hunley, the world's first successful combat submarine.
