HMAS Coonawarra (Darwin)

HMAS Coonawarra is a Royal Australian Navy base at Darwin, Northern Territory. It is the Navy's principal establishment in northern Australia and provides support to fleet units homeported there, of which the base accommodates seven. The base is owned by the Department of Defence and has been operated by the Royal Australian Navy since its establishment.

Berthing is provided at a wharf able to take six vessels lying three abreast. Fuel, electrical power, compressed air, sewage discharge, oily waste suction and defuelling are available at the berthing points. A ship lift handles vessels of up to 750 tonnes, raising or lowering at 420 millimetres per minute, and can dock a vessel drawing up to two metres at any state of tide. The wharf and lift structures are built to withstand cyclones. Fuel storage was established at Darwin from the 1930s, when the Navy built oil tanks on the harbour front.

The first naval depot at Darwin was formed in January 1935 as a naval reserve depot within the Naval Reserve District of Queensland; the Naval District of the Northern Territory was separated in 1937. Known initially as HMAS Penguin, the depot was commissioned as HMAS Melville on 1 August 1940, and a high-powered radio transmitter built in 1939 supported Allied communications in the South West Pacific during the Second World War. Urban growth at Darwin through the 1950s and 1960s constrained the Melville site while naval personnel numbers rose, prompting a decision to move the base to the naval Wireless Transmitting Station at Coonawarra. The relocated establishment was commissioned as HMAS Coonawarra on 16 March 1970, with the former Melville facilities remaining in use until 1974.