La Rouge Beret
Donor
I don't know if a rebuild could be undertaken to lower manning costs. However the Type 984 3D radar and ADWAS might be too much for the RANs requirements and incompatible with the rest of the RAN so it might be removed in the RAN refit, which should free up some crew requirement.
The Melbourne with her Sea Venom/Gannet/Wessex CAG escorted HMAS Sydney on her 1st, 3rd and 4th trooping voyages to Vietnam but stayed outside the Market Time area. She was also offered by the RAN in March 66 as an ASW asset on Yankee station and the USN requested her in April 67 as an ASW asset.
In my mind the Melbourne could have escorted Sydney on her 3rd trooping trip in April-May 1966, stayed on for a war cruise doing Market Time, ASW and possibly CAS for 1ATF, escorted Sydney in the AO again in June 1966 and left with her on about the 8th of June. There are several instances of this sort of bursts of activity by the Sydney that the Melbourne could have covered, like the combined 5th and 6th voyage where Sydney went to Singapore to change battalions rather than Australia in April-May 1967.
Of course this would be far easier to arrange if the RAN hadn't been hamstrung by the 1959 decision to make Melbourne an ASW Helo carrier and instead bought Skyhawks and Trackers at that stage.
Sounds quite plausible that MELBOURNE would be temporarily assigned to Market Time & be available for CAS duties in support of 1 ATF. The problem lays with gaining sufficient recognition / publicity of the FAA and its fixed wing element to purchase HMS HERMES. Now this may very well occur earlier with a hotter Konfrontasi resulting in one or two air to air engagements against TNI forces.
Perhaps MELBOURNE's air group shoots down another MIG or destroys several torpedo boats attempting to attack USN destroyers...
Is this for your bigger & more independent ADF TL?