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...
Tom Grahamslaw, who died at the age of 73 in 1973, spent 45 years with the old Papua and Papua New Guinea administrations, retiring in 1960 as PNG’s Chief Collector of Customs and a...
This is a record of the last days our family (mother Lillian, sisters Zelma, Dawn, Leonie and myself and others) experienced prior to, and after, the evacuation. My father, Clarence, remained in Samarai with...
One of the more extraordinary stories to come out of WW2 involves John Stokie, a New Guinea planter and one-time private in the NGVR, who ended the war as a decorated coastwatcher and guerilla...
Edward (Ted) Kenna was born in Hamilton, Victoria, on 6 July 1919. He died there on 8 July 2009, aged 90 years and two days. He was the last surviving Australian Victoria Cross winner...
Rob and Alan Kenna, sons of the late Ted Kenna, VC, and their brother-in-law Ian Day visited Wewak, Dagua and the Sepik River during 28 March-8 April 2012 with Reg Yates of “Kokoda Historical”...
This article was first published in Milne Bay 1942 and is now reprinted with permission from Clive Baker and War Book Shop It was during March that Lt Alan Timperley (ANGAU), was ordered to...
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...
The first time that my parents heard of the impending invasion of New Guinea by Japanese forces was on Boxing Day, 1941. At that time we were at Korandindi Plantation on the Mavulu River...
