Former sailors from the Navy Corvette named after the city of Wagga are exploring new ways to keep the ship's legacy alive as age thins the ranks of its wartime shipmates.
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The HMAS Wagga Association will hold its biennial reunion in Wagga on Wednesday.
Association members are continuing to lobby the Royal Australian Navy to name a new vessel after their ship that went to the scrapyard decades ago after serving in World War Two and the Korean War.
Association acting president David Williams told The Daily Advertiser that the HMAS Wagga shipmates were looking to agreements with other veterans' groups to maintain the ship's legacy.
Mr Williams, a former Navy Warrant Officer, served on the HMAS Wagga's final voyage to New Caledonia in 1960 and considers himself the "baby of the mob" at age 78.
"We had six wartime members pass away last year but there is still quite a few members who joined up after the Second World War who are still around," he said.
"What we are doing to keep the group alive is that we have been hounding the Navy for years now to commission a new ship called Wagga, but that seems to fall on deaf ears mostly.
"We're still hoping for a ship but we have affiliated the HMAS Wagga Association with the Naval Reserve Association just so that we keep the name alive and if the group did fold due to lack of members the reserves would keep the name alive.
"If there is a new ship named Wagga, the crew can take up all the memorabilia and our flags and our banner."
There are now just three wartime HMAS Wagga crew members left alive, with Tom Butcher living in Bayswater, Victoria; Joe Patching in Wollongong, NSW and Snow Warburton in Meadow Springs, WA.
"None of them will be coming as they are in their mid to late 90s," Mr Williams said.
HMAS Wagga was on of 56 'Bathurst Class' Corvettes built for the Royal Australian Navy in eight separate dockyards around Australia and named after inland towns or seaports.
The Corvettes were known as the 'workhorses of the fleet" for the variety of tasks they were given which included convoy escort, anti-submarine patrols, search and rescue, evacuation of troops, and shore bombardment.
Wagga City Council will hold a Mayor Reception for the HMAS Wagga on Wednesday morning before the association's reunion dinner at Wagga RSL.
There will be a service for departed shipmates at 10.45am on Friday, April 26 at the Victory Memorial Gardens.