Just wetting the Canberra model between stints of modelling etc. The "Ah-ha" moment for Supermarine's embryonic "Seagull V" came when an Royal Australian Air Force evaluation team visiting England in 1933, saw the drawings of the unprepossessing biplane amphibian and liked what they saw. But they weren't just shopping for a seaplane for Australia's new Town- and County-class cruisers, like the dashing HMAS Canberra shown here- they were also fulfilling a dream from a previous "Town and County" government's economic stimulus. A "thought bubble" that had burdened Australia with an expensive and largely useless "seaplane carrier." This was a time when few folk had any real idea what a multi-role seaplane did or why you might even need a seaplane carrier? So, alas, by the time the first Seagull V arrived in Australia in 1935, Supermarine actually owed that patronage to a "ship of the damned" anchored ignominiously in harbour back in Sydney, decommissioned in 1933 after a few controversial years of service, and thereafter a floating workshop for seaplanes. The RAN dumped the aptly named HMAS Albatross in a bit of a trade with the Royal Navy, in 1938. Remember the song? "If you should see a great big box and its within your reach...?" Perhaps the RN already knew it was getting something of a "work in progress" here (to put it diplomatically), or perhaps more of an ugly duckling judging by the posse of throwback biplane amphibians it had helped unleash upon the world from a portal into some Steampunk Netherworld. Yet, HMS Albatross floated and could launch aircraft (of sorts?). That mattered a lot in the first dark days of WW2. Besides, before the letters STOL came to mean anything, the bizarre Supermarine Walrus, the main production run of the type, handled so nimbly that it could apparently land on a carrier deck without using an arrestor-hook!!! Imagine what you could do with a machine like that?! Meanwhile, HMS Albatross eventually got to go to the ball. She emerged from a serious refit and from the pre-dawn mist on D-Day, as a mobile workshop... an amphibious landing support ship. Last year, some eighty years after the ill-starred HMAS Albatross was found wanting, the hull of the third HMAS Canberra arrived in Australia for completion. No sleek cruiser or missile-spouting frigate this time. Its a great big box, the cornerstone of a navy expecting regional disasters, both natural and man-made. HMAS Canberra III is an LHD... a Landing Helicopter Dock... (is that Olympian laughter I hear?). Modelling in Shade 10.5. Rendered in Vue 8 Esprit. Thanks for viewing and comments