Still while unfortunate sometimes these things happen. Atleast at Platypus you were drawing on the whole of Sydney for crewing (and lets be honest most of the east coast with airfares/buses/roads being so cheap and regular). Wives/partners mostly would have more contacts/family etc to help with these types of situations. Relocating to WA does not afford that opportunity and costs associated would be far more expensive.Something that seems to be forgotten is that retention of submarine crews has always been a problem even in the Oberon days at Platypus. Talk to an old submariner and they will tell you that pressganging sailors on shore assignment to get a boat to sea was a common occurance. They could kiss their wife good by in the morning expecting to be home for dinner and end up being out for three months.
For training and deep water exercises Sydney is ideal. War time or threats you can preposition assets as required. For some threats Sydney would be closer than a lot of other bases, and you can move out with all that local traffic.
We should be definately working towards a West/East setup. It doesn't have to be a priority but long lead expensive items like docks etc should be obtained or atleast not sold off.
Platypus hasn't been developed, it may actually be cheaper to make it a sub base again (even if its just a small one) than to do anything else with it. You could build sub pens out of all the concrete you would have to pour to make the place enviromentally sound..