The sinking of the Japanese prisoner transport ship Montevideo Maru 73 years ago remains Australia’s greatest maritime disaster, and there is a tragic link with Gallipoli. Recent research revealed that 15 of the civilian...
Rudy Buckley in NGVR/PNGVR Ex-Members Association parade dress. Photo by T. Dowling One of the most incredible discoveries to come to light confirming the departure of the Montevideo Maru1 from Rabaul with captive service...
An RAAF Douglas C-47 transport aircraft with nineteen on board, which disappeared minutes after takeoff from Milne Bay in New Guinea in September 1945, may have been re-located. An Australian tour boat operator, as...
My recent visit to PNG falls naturally into three parts: the cruise from Alotau to Rabaul, Anzac Day in Rabaul, and my return to Goroka after 36 years. I will cover only Anzac Day...
The following speech was made at the San Remo Club, West New Britain, on Anzac Day 2012 We gather today here at the San Remo Club, as we annually have in recent years, to...
There is something attractive about the idea of enjoying a cold beer at the end of a hot tropical day, particularly if it’s with a group of great mates, with a view of palm...
Edwards, William Manning CMG MBE MID, Colonel, NGX455: the story of an Australian Private soldier who stormed Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 and became the CO of NGVR, 1 NGIB & PIR during WW2...
The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (AN&MEF) was a volunteer force of approximately 2,000 men, raised in Australia shortly after the outbreak of the First World War to seize and destroy German wireless...
This year, 2015, is the 70th Anniversary of the end of World War II. It was a war that stunned the world in its ferocity and swiftness, and there was not a living soul...
Like many Australian ex-service men, Lt Colonel Leslie FS Hore, MC, MID, went to the former German colony of New Guinea after WWI. When he died in 1935 he owned a plantation on the...
“Japanese Grave”. The words on the map record in stark simplicity a man’s lonely resting-place on an obscure island in the Solomon Sea. The Japanese was a pilot who had run out of fuel,...
Over the Anzac Day period in April this year, a group trekked from Rabaul to the South Coast of East New Britain, following in the steps of many of the soldiers of 2/22 Battalion...
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...
