Ted Kenna, VC: Reg Yates
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”...
Category: World Wars
Timperley’s rescue voyage
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...
Kokoda 70 years on: Charlie Lynn
Kokoda is a powerful word. According to the Orokaiva koko means place of skulls, da is village. The combination of syllables conjures up “adventure” in the minds of sedentary beings. It makes sense. Many...
Merry Christmas be blowed: The lorry is calling for you in an hour: Pat Murray (neé Stanfield)
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...
More wartime recollections: Bob Emery
(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...
Montevideo Maru—New evidence on Austrealia’s greatest maritime loss: Rod Miller
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...
The dedication of the Australian Services Nurses National Memorial
(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...
The story behind the picture: John Phillips
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...
Recollections of ANGAU: Tom Grahamslaw
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...
The evacuation of Samarai, Boxing Day 1941: Rosalie Thacker (neé Skelly)
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...
Private Stokie’s war in the jungle: Don Hook
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...
Tropical force and the Kavieng graves: Greg Knight
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...
When the Japanese bombed Magang: Bob Emery
(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...
Read, Mason, Tashiro and the Bougainville mystery: Ken Wright
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...
World War II in the Pacific—The closing stages: Charles Betteridge
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...
