A FREMANTLE production company has gone where no camera crew has gone before to film a four-part series about the Royal Australian Navy’s elite clearance diver branch.
Producer Ed Punchard, a Fremantle resident and former commercial diver, said he jumped at the chance to add Navy Divers to his resume, which includes the productions Shipwreck Detectives and Diving School.
The show follows a group of 27 young men as they attempt to join the Navy’s elite clearance diver branch.
Over nine months they endure one of the most extreme military training programs in the world, after which only 14 will make it through.
Punchard said watching the young men as they went through the gruelling course was inspiring.
“What we see in Navy Divers is this incredibly intense experience they go through,” he said.
“When you see that level of spirit and determination it is very inspirational.”
Punchard is no stranger to diving, having worked as a commercial diver in the North Sea, which is widely regarded as one of the world’s roughest bodies of water.
He was also one of only 62 survivors from the explosion on the North Sea oil rig Piper Alpha in 1988, which killed 167 men.
“I managed to climb down a rope and escape,” he said.
“It was pretty full on out there.”
Punchard said diving was often seen as one of the more “can do” jobs in the world.
“I always say if you want to get a job done, give it to a team of divers,” he said.
Navy Divers screens in four episodes on ABC1, starting on October 28.