Australia’s Worst Air Crash Commemorated Eighty Years On
The worst air crash in Australian history happened on 7 September 1943. It is one of the best kept secrets of World War II. Eighty years later, Leslie Thomson, who was there, would rather...
Category: Battles and Campaigns
What Happened to the People of Papua New Guinea in World War II By John B Quinn
In the Covid-19 lock-down days in Victoria, I spent an interesting time going through some of the volumes of the Official Australian History of World War II, courtesy of the library of the RSL...
Soldiers of PNG Fought Many Battles – Gregory J Ivey
PART 2 This part of the story of PNG soldiers maintains the rarely-viewed perspective of a loyal, proud, resourceful, and gritty fighting unit – one that any soldier would feel confident to be part...
The Evacuation of the Sepik: JA Thurston’s Expedition April to September 1942 (part 2)
Elizabeth Thurston Part I of the story of this expedition appeared in PNG Kundu, March 2023. It described preparations for the expedition which included the collection of stores from Thurston’s mining claim and their...
A Thousand Miles to Freedom
Eighty years ago, in what was one of the longest and most arduous rescue trips in the Pacific war zone, five civilians, survivors of a party of twenty-nine, got clear of the Japanese at...
First Flight to Tadji—Remembering the Liberation of Aitape
Rob Parer CMG, MBE 18 April 1944 was the day that General MacArthur’s liberation force took Aitape and Hollandia, the largest amphibious operation of the South Pacific War. Within 42 hours of the landing, No....
The Pacific War Buna-Gona 1942
I’m putting you in command at Buna. Relieve Harding . . . I want you to remove all officers who won’t fight. Relieve regimental and battalion commanders; if necessary, put sergeants in charge of...
Turning Point in WWII
The Battle for Milne Bay—Japan’s first defeat on land in the Second World War—was a defining moment in the evolution of the indomitable Australian fighting spirit. For the men of the AIF, the militia...
The Flying Cowboy
SQUADRON LEADER PETER TURNBULL DFC He was called ‘The Flying Cowboy’ and was known for his ‘magnificent fighting spirit and great skill’ during the Second World War but, to his family, Squadron Leader Peter...
The Pacific War Milne Bay 1942
Australian troops had, at Milne Bay, inflicted on the Japanese their first undoubted defeat on land. Some of us may forget that, of all the Allies, it was the Australians who first broke the...
Damien Parer, Master Photographer 1912–1944
Nearly 80 years after his death, Damien Peter Parer remains one of Australia’s most well-known combat cameramen He was born on 1 August 1912 at Malvern in Melbourne but was educated largely in Bathurst,...
THE PACIFIC WAR Kokoda 1942
They carried stretchers over seemingly impassable barriers, with the patient reasonably comfortable. The care they give to the patient is magnificent. If night finds the stretcher still on the trail, they will find a...
Prelude to the Pacific War in New Guinea
The New Guinea Campaign of WWII lasted from early 1942 until the Japanese surrender at Wewak in September 1945. During the initial phase, eighty years ago, Japan invaded the Australian-administered Mandated Territory of New...
A Biographical Story: The Army Patrol That Went Wrong Part 1 NALAU BINGEDING
I grew up in Wagangluhu Village, along the banks of the Buso River in the Bukawa area of Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. As a kid the banks of Buso River were the best...
THE PACIFIC WAR New Guinea Islands 1942
The bleakest, most depressing days in Australia’s history were surely the six months following Japan’s entry into the Second World War … the invasion of Rabaul by Japanese troops on 23 January 1942 was...
