Australians sail for the war

A British chronology of the war records the sailing of the first Australian contingent under 17 October 1914. In reality it was a process lasting several weeks. In mid-October, in the ports of eastern and southern Australia, soldiers of the newly formed Australian Imperial Force (AIF) were boarding transports. On 17–19 October the battalions of the 2nd Brigade from Victoria, among others, embarked in the port of Melbourne, and on 18 October the transport Afric left Sydney with the 1st Battalion. The ships sailed along the southern coast of the continent to a common assembly point in Western Australia.

The first division

As early as the beginning of August 1914 the Australian government decided to offer Great Britain 20,000 soldiers. Because the Defence Act did not allow units of the existing militia to be sent abroad, an entirely new force made up solely of volunteers was created. Its core was Major General William Bridges’ 1st Division, some 18,000 men in three infantry brigades. The first brigade came from New South Wales, the second from Victoria and the third from the smaller states. Alongside the division went the 1st Light Horse Brigade, the later famous Light Horse.

The convoy was to have sailed at the end of September, but its departure was postponed. Admiral von Spee’s German squadron was operating in the Pacific, and in the Indian Ocean the cruiser Emden, which in September had shelled Madras. The Admiralty did not want to send thousands of soldiers without a strong escort. Some of the transports that had already left Queensland had to wait in Melbourne.

Albany

From the last days of October the transports from Australia gathered in King George Sound near Albany. They were joined by the ships carrying the New Zealanders, who had sailed from Wellington on 16 October. On 1 November the convoy of 38 transports, ten of them from New Zealand, set off west. It carried some 21,500 Australians, 8,500 New Zealanders and more than ten thousand horses. It was escorted by the British armoured cruiser Minotaur, the Australian cruisers Sydney and Melbourne, and the Japanese battlecruiser Ibuki.

Emden and Egypt

On 9 November the convoy was passing near the Cocos Islands when news came that a German warship was attacking the telegraph station there. It was Emden. The cruiser HMAS Sydney detached from the convoy and in the Battle of Cocos forced the German raider to run herself aground on a reef. It was the first ever engagement between a ship of the Australian navy and an enemy.

The convoy was to have sailed to England, where the Australians were to complete their training before going to the Western Front. On the way, however, the plans were changed. The camps in England were overcrowded, and the Ottoman Empire had entered the war. The British Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, asked the Australian government to agree to the troops being landed in Egypt. At the beginning of December the ships reached Alexandria, and the Australians pitched camp at Mena, at the foot of the pyramids of Giza. A few months later, in April 1915, they landed together with the New Zealanders on the Gallipoli peninsula.