Australians land in the Bismarck Archipelago

On the morning of 11 September 1914 Australian naval reservists landed on New Britain, the largest island of the Bismarck Archipelago, called Neupommern by the Germans. The island belonged to the colony of German New Guinea. Australia’s first military operation of the First World War had begun.

The war for the wireless stations

At the start of the war the German East Asia Squadron of Vice-Admiral Maximilian von Spee was operating in the Pacific. Wireless stations in the German colonies served to communicate with it. As early as 6 August London asked the governments of Australia and New Zealand to seize these stations. The New Zealanders occupied Samoa at the end of August, while Australia raised a separate formation for the task, the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (AN&MEF).

This force was assembled in haste. It consisted of an infantry battalion of about a thousand volunteers enlisted in Sydney, and about 500 naval reservists and former sailors who were to fight ashore as infantry. Few of them had any military experience. It was commanded by Colonel William Holmes. On 19 August the force sailed from Sydney in the transport Berrima. It was escorted by ships of the Royal Australian Navy, among them the battlecruiser Australia and the cruiser Sydney. On 9 September the cruiser Melbourne occupied the island of Nauru without resistance; the German staff had disabled the wireless station themselves.

The landing

The main objective was Rabaul, the port and administrative centre of the colony on the Gazelle Peninsula, and the wireless station, whose exact location the Australians did not know. They suspected that it lay inland, around Bita Paka, a few kilometres from the coast.

On 11 September the squadron arrived off Rabaul, where there were no German ships. The cruiser Sydney and the destroyer Warrego put small parties of reservists ashore at Kabakaul and at Herbertshöhe, the seat of the German governor, today’s Kokopo. The landing was unopposed. The German detachment at Herbertshöhe had already withdrawn inland, and at seven in the morning the Australians hoisted the British flag over the settlement.

From Kabakaul a patrol of about 25 reservists set off along a road through the jungle towards the wireless station. It soon ran into ambushes. The colony was defended by only a few dozen Germans, mostly reservists, and about 240 Melanesian policemen, but they knew the terrain well and forced the Australians into a day-long fight. Reinforcements were brought to Kabakaul from the ships, and then infantry from the Berrima. That day the first Australian soldiers of the war were killed.

What came next

On 12 September an infantry battalion landed at Rabaul, and the next day the Australians formally proclaimed the occupation of the island, although the German governor, Eduard Haber, had not yet surrendered. The German administration withdrew inland, to Toma. After shelling by the cruiser Encounter and the approach of Australian infantry, the Germans opened negotiations and on 17 September signed the capitulation of the colony. The joy at the quick success was marred by the fate of the submarine AE1, which on 14 September vanished without trace on patrol near Rabaul with the 35 members of its crew.

In the following weeks the Australians occupied the remaining German posts on New Guinea and the surrounding islands. After the war the League of Nations entrusted Australia with a mandate over the former German colony.