Oct 30th 2007 - AMT Polkinghorne
My name is Arie Polkinghorne. I am currently 23 years of age, and I was raised in the sunny Bay of Plenty, in the small town of Kawerau. I spent most of my school years there and did one year at Whakatane High School.
Image Right: AMT Polkinghorne starting a generator (NIS-10-030)
The Navy for me was a ticket out of a small town with not a lot of opportunities for young people leaving school. So I jumped at the chance to go the opposite way from my mates, who were not doing much or taking out big loans for different tertiary studies, and enlisted.
From Jan 12th 2003 I was shaped and moulded into a Naval Rating. Joining the Fleet after a 9 month course in what would become my career as a Marine Technician, I was quickly posted to the former frigate HMNZS CANTERBURY (F421) – soon to be sunk in the Bay of Islands - and was given the opportunity to develop the hands on skills of a ‘Stoker’ on the now-decommissioned steam ship and get a few runs ashore in and around Australia and New Zealand.
Image Above: AMT Polkinghorne opening a valve controlling heat to the ship’s distillers for making fresh water (NIS-10-031).
Picking up my rate it was back alongside in time for another course to further progress as a stoker, only this time deciding the path for the rest of my career… Propulsion. After a short time alongside having the first of my two children I posted to HMNZS KIWI for 6 months as the maintainer/tanky onboard. I found KIWI to be a great platform and one of my more relaxed postings to date.
Getting comfortable and realising I wasn’t able to progress in my taskbook on small boats, it was off to the Career Manager’s office to try my luck on HMNZS RESOLUTION. Going from sharing a mess with 40-odd other Jacks, and cramped engineering spaces to almost the opposite (two berth cabins plus en suite) was too good to be true.
Having posted on Reso from 08/2006 I have been assigned the duty as Ship’s Tanky, as well as a regular maintainer “down the hole”. Having achieved AMT1 status onboard my future goal is get on my LMT course and to spend more time with my wife and kids.