"Sydney" normally transported 450 soldiers—the main force of a Royal Australian Regiment (RAR) battalion—plus equipment and vehicles on each voyage. The soldiers were accommodated in the sailors mess decks, with the sailors displaced to the hangar. Vehicles were secured to the flight deck, while other cargo was packed onto pallets and stored either in the hangar or on the flight deck. Although it was originally intended that "Sydney" would sail to and from Saigon, the ship's commanding officer at the time of the first voyage, John Crabb, informed the Naval Board that he would refuse orders to do so, as the Saigon River could easily be mined after "Sydney" had sailed up. Instead, the port of Vũng Tàu was selected as the destination, with soldiers and equipment transferred to shore by helicopters, landing craft, and barges. During the early voyages, unloading and reloading was a multiple-day process, with the transport moving to deeper waters each night, but improved cargo handling practices, upgrades to "Sydney" (including the installation of three new cargo cranes and six embarked landing craft during mid-1968 refit), and increased access to US cargo- and troop-carrying helicopters, reduced this to a single day by 1968.