Aaron Tait

Sometimes when people hear my background, they think ‘wait, how old are you, and how did you squeeze all that in?’ If you had the same thought, here are some of the details.

I was born in 1983 in New Zealand, and spent my childhood and youth in Auckland and then Perth, Australia.

In 2001, I joined the Australian Navy at a very young age (I’d turned 17 three months earlier) as a Defence Academy (ADFA) entry officer, with the rank of Midshipman. At the time, the Navy wanted to see if officers like us were worth the Academy's investment, so they sent us to half a year of officer training (NEOC), then the second half of the year in specialist training at sea. I completed NEOC at Jervis Bay and during this time decided I wanted to pursue the pathway of becoming a Navy Clearance Diver who then worked either at the Clearance Diving Teams or in Australia special forces units. I was enticed by the framing of the branch then as ‘elite’ and ‘specialist’, and I was told that the start of the long and gruelling path of becoming a Clearance Diving Officer and then one day moving into special forces teams, was to first do a Ship’s Divers course. I started Phase 1 of my Seaman Officer (SEEAC) training after NEOC, was then posted to HMAS Sydney for Phase 2, and then pushed to try to do my Ship’s Divers course. The Ship’s Divers course is not a selection course for Clearance Diving or Special Forces; it is just the learning of skills for scuba diving to be able to join a diving team for a warship. In 2001 this was the first step to any career in the Clearance Diving branch and had to be passed before the next phase which was then a Clearance Diver Selection Test. (In the media for my new book, in the interests of keeping things simple for civilian audiences I haven’t always taken the time to make the military specifics of this as clear as I could. This is my mistake alone, and apologies for any offence to military members for this). I was sent to this diving course in September 2001 (Sydney needed Ship’s Divers), and in the later stages of this course, the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred. I received a text message asking me to return to HMAS Sydney (where I was still technically posted) as Sydney had been told it was deploying to the Persian Gulf to relieve units on Operation Damask. While a number of other Midshipmen posted to Sydney moved to other units, I and another Midshipman (who would later go on to become a fully qualified Clearance Diver) were told to stay to join the ship’s diving capacity and also to train up to join the compliant and non-compliant boarding teams. This was all rather unique and rare for an Officer so young (less rare for non-commissioned sailors) and is not as tough and glamorous as it might sound - Midshipmen are commonly referred to as ‘Snotties’, and Ship’s Divers have little to no respect from fully qualified Clearance Divers. I can’t speak to what this course was like before or after 2001, just to my own experience.

I turned 18 as HMAS Sydney moved through its ‘workups’, readying for the Persian Gulf. Operation Damask became Operation Slipper (the War on Terror), and ground units went to Afghanistan, and maritime units went to the Persian Gulf. It’s worth noting that this was two years before the ground mission of the Iraq War 2 began. I was the youngest member of the HMAS Sydney crew, (meaning I had the honour of cutting the Christmas cake with the Captain). In the area of operations, I did plenty of compliant and non-compliant boardings on Iraqi smuggler and cargo vessels coming out of the Khawr Abd Allah waterway, while also completing Phase 2. Again I can’t speak to what boardings were like before or after 2001/02, just to my own experience. I didn’t set foot in Iraq; I was in the Navy, and we tended to do a lot of our work at sea. I then completed ADFA from 2002 – 2004 (with plenty of travel during those years during paid leave periods, including six months of leave without pay), followed by the remaining phases of my SEEAC training and spent the rest of my career (until 2007) on the Mine Hunter Clearance ships HMAS Huon and Norman out of HMAS Waterhen serving as a Seaman Officer, Ships Diver, Communications Officer, and Acting Navigator (I did not do the Navigator course) with plenty of overlaps with Clearance Divers and the Teams. It’s important to be clear that I never tried for the CDAT/CDOT (the Clearance Diver Acceptance/Officer Test), so I never started the Clearance Diver Officers course, I never became a Clearance Diver, and I never served in any Special Forces Units. I have the utmost respect for those who have.

I completed a master’s of Global Strategy and Policy (UNSW) and a master’s of International Development (UNSW) during my military time, in my own time, and left the RAN in 2007 as a Lieutenant with an Australian Active Service Medal (Operation Slipper), Afghanistan Medal (I’ve never been to Afghanistan, but these were issued to those who served in Operation Slipper) and the Australian Defence Medal.  

After my time in the military, I moved to East Africa (2007), living initially in Kenya at a community project in the Central Highlands, and then for 2008 I lived and worked in Tanzania at an education project north of Dar es Salaam. In 2009 I returned to Kenya to the same community project.

My book Far Horizons is focused on these years, 2001 - 2009.

In 2009/10 I spent a year completing a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) at The University of Cambridge out of the Geography faculty, as a McNemeny Scholar and Bateman Scholar. I was part of Trinity Hall. After Cambridge, I returned to Australia to co-found Spark International with my wife Kaitlin, a charity working to support startup entrepreneurs across emerging markets, and in 2015, I merged this organisation with the Australian charity ygap, where I became a Director and the Chief Impact Officer. In 2011 I also co-founded the education company Education Changemakers (with Dave Faulkner), which in 2022 we sold to the Australian technology company Go1.

These days, home is Byron Bay. I travel a bunch with my family (for all of 2026, in fact).