First to see action.

The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (A.N & M.E.F.) sailed from Australia on 19^th August 1914 to occupy the German colonies in the South Pacific and prevent wireless transmissions to the German Pacific naval squadron.

Photo: The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force at Randwick, Sydney August 1914

The Australian War Memorial describes the A.N & M.E.F as the first Australian fighting force in the First World War. In September 1914, while the Australian Imperial Force was still being formed, the Royal Australian Navy and the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force under Colonel William Holmes captured Rabaul. Within three months, Holmes’s forces had garrisoned the remainder of Germany’s Pacific possessions south of the Equator, stretching from northeast mainland New Guinea to the Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, Bougainville, and Nauru.

A detailed account of the actions of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force can be read on line at the Australian War Memorial in the Official Histories Volume X The Australians at Rabaul: The Capture and Administration of the German Possessions in the Southern Pacific. This volume presents the background to and a detailed account of the capture of German New Guinea, and it also covers many aspects of administration until 1921, when Australia’s civilian rule of those territories began as a League of Nations mandate. This story of Australia’s military occupation “up north” is crucial to our understanding of this country’s role as a colonial power and of W.M. Hughes’s campaign at the Paris Peace Conference to shore up the post-war defence of Australia’s interests in the Pacific. It is also pertinent to the history of the infamous White Australia Policy.