This long letter that Patricia Murray (neé Stanfield) wrote from Sydney in February 1942 to her older brother, Jim Stanfield, then serving with the RAF in Britain, recalls the hardships faced by very many...
(As recorded on tape in October 1996 and published in Una Voce, March 1997, page 35. An edited version is contained in Tales of Papua New Guinea, page 70) Our membership records show that...
In 1941, with war against Japan threatening, the Menzies government dispatched “Lark Force”, (nearly 1500 men) to garrison Rabaul, in the Australian Protectorate of New Guinea. On 1 July 1942, around 800 of these...
(Described by Pat Johnson – Una Voce No. 4, December 1999) Dedicated on Saturday, 2 October 1999, on Anzac Parade in Canberra, was the Australian Service Nurses National Memorial. A competition for the design...
Eric Johns writes about ‘that’ photograph: I thought I knew something about that iconic photograph of Raphael Oimbari and George Whittington, until I met fellow PNGAA member John Phillips on 28 April at the...
25 April 2015 marks the 100 years anniversary of the unsuccessful, but often heroic, troop landings, and eventual withdrawal, at Gallipoli in Turkey in the 1914-18 World War. The shared experiences and losses gave...
Much has been written lately about the fall of Rabaul in January 1942 and the consequent tragic loss of life when over a thousand prisoners went down in the prison ship Montevideo Maru. These...
The commemoration of both the Australian Prisoner-of War Memorial (6 February 2004) and the Memorial for those who died on board the Montevideo Maru (7 February 2004) was attended by a number of PNGAA...
Kavieng is the principal town of Papua New Guinea’s New Ireland and less than three degrees south of the equator. Present day Nusa Parade runs along Kavieng’s sleepy waterfront with large tropical trees forming...
(As recorded on tape on 1 May 1996 and published Una Voce, September 1996, page 13. An edited version is contained in Tales of Papua New Guinea, page 56). Bob Emery, a long-time member...
During World War 2, two groups of Australian Coast Watchers operating independently of each other played a decisive part in the battle for Guadalcanal and the subsequent Allied advance through the South Pacific. The...
As World War II in New Guinea progressed, the noose around the Japanese was tightening further. By March 1944, the Americans were in possession of the Admiralty Islands and Madang, where the Japanese were...
(first published in the September 1999 issue of the PNGAA Journal, Una Voce, and reformatted for the PNGAA website in January 2015) Forty years ago, the Coastwatchers Memorial Lighthouse, at the entrance to Madang...
(Published Una Voce, June 2002, page 14) This is the story of Gladys Baker’s escape from the Japanese as she described it on Radio 2FC at 7.45pm on Sunday night, 27 August 1942. Glad...
Extract from a letter written by Hilda Johnson to a close friend – published Una Voce, December 1997, page 30 and in Tales of Papua New Guinea, page 65. The letter was written some...
