Whenever naval practitioners and scholars gather in this country, it is only ever a matter of minutes – or sometimes seconds – before someone laments the “sea blindness” of the Australian public.

This is the notion that most people go about their daily lives oblivious to things such as Australia having one of the largest exclusive economic zones in the world, our dependence on seaborne trade such as imports of refined fuels, our reliance on undersea data cables, to name just a few aspects.