News Service from House Harris

NSW: Sydney survivor may have lived days after ship sank

SYDNEY, March 18 AAP - The unknown sailor who washed up on Christmas Island months after HMAS Sydney sank during WWII could have been alive at sea for days with serious injuries, an inquiry has been told.

HMAS Sydney sank after a battle with the German raider Kormoran off the West Australian coast on November 19, 1941.

A life raft carrying the unknown sailor's body washed up at Christmas Island in February 1942 and he was buried there.

He is believed to be the only crew member found after the cruiser sank with the loss of all on board, but has never been identified.

Professor Johan Duflou, a forensic pathologist, examined the skeletal remains of the sailor after they were exhumed by a team of experts in 2006.

The commission of inquiry into the sinking of HMAS Sydney has previously been told the sailor had a piece of metal, believed to be shrapnel, embedded in his skull.

Professor Duflou told the inquiry on Wednesday the metal was unlikely to have caused major brain damage.

"The projectile need not have killed the person, certainly if medical care was available," he said.

"Today it would be very likely that the person would have survived."

In a report read to the inquiry, Prof Duflou said the sailor could have lived for days with the injury.

"It is possible that the deceased may have survived a number of days if there was no significant brain damage."

He said the metal object was unlikely to be a bullet, as there were none of the radiating fractures usually associated with gunshot wounds.

In separate evidence, Wesley Olsen, the author of a book on the sinking, criticised the navy's battle instructions of the era.

The Sydney is known to have gone too close to the Kormoran, possibly disobeying naval instructions.

But Mr Olsen told the inquiry the orders in those days were a "recipe for disaster".

The inquest also heard from former soldier Austin Chapman who said he saw a mural painted on the wall of a Japanese naval academy in the late 1940s depicting a Japanese submarine in battle with an Australian ship he believed to be the Sydney.

Mr Chapman said he knew the ship depicted in the mural was Australian because it had the navy's white ensign.

"I have a photographic memory and I can see the murals now," Mr Chapman told the inquiry.

But counsel assisting the inquiry, Commander Jack Rush, QC, said that ensign was not used until 1967 and "could not have existed at the time you said you saw it".

The inquiry before Commissioner Terence Cole resumes in Sydney on Monday.