Fifty-six Australian corvettes went to war in the 1940s. Thirty years later most of them had been scrapped, and the hulk that was once HMAS Castlemaine was also heading for the breaker’s yard.

Then in 1973 the Maritime Trust of Australia came to the rescue, and its volunteers took Castlemaine home to her birthplace of Williamstown, Victoria.

Over decades they restored her wartime configuration, and today maintain the heritage-registered corvette.

HMAS Castlemaine, still afloat, tells her story of conflict in the Pacific - and of the young men who confronted its dangers with courage, hard work and good humour.