HMAS Kuttabul (Fleet Base East)

HMAS Kuttabul is a Royal Australian Navy shore establishment at Potts Point, Sydney, New South Wales, on the southern shore of Sydney Harbour. It forms part of Fleet Base East, the RAN's principal operational base on the Australian east coast, and provides administrative, training, logistics and accommodation support to personnel assigned to the facilities that make up that base. The establishment occupies buildings in Potts Point and in the adjoining Garden Island dockyard, and also supports naval personnel posted elsewhere in the greater Sydney region. It is owned by the Department of Defence and commanded by a RAN captain.

As the administrative element of Fleet Base East, Kuttabul is associated with the fleet units berthed at Garden Island. Fleet Base East is also responsible for the RAN mine countermeasures forces stationed on the east coast, which are based at HMAS Waterhen on Sydney Harbour.

The Garden Island facility includes the Captain Cook Graving Dock, built between 1940 and 1945 by filling the water between Garden Island and Potts Point; it was the largest graving dock in the Southern Hemisphere at the time of its construction. The dock and the associated dockyard are operated under lease by Thales Australia.

Garden Island has hosted a naval base since 1856, when the government of New South Wales proposed transferring the area to the Royal Navy for ships of the Australia Station. Following the formation of the Royal Australian Navy in 1911, the United Kingdom transferred its naval establishments in Australia to the RAN, and the Commonwealth acquired Garden Island itself from New South Wales in 1945. The establishment is named for the steam ferry HMAS Kuttabul, lost at Garden Island in 1942. Until the adoption of the Two Ocean Policy and the commissioning of HMAS Stirling in Western Australia in 1978, Kuttabul was the RAN's main naval base; the creation of two principal bases brought the additional designation Fleet Base East.