Category: ANZAC

PRINCIPAL COMBATANTS: Australian liquor interests and their military supporters vs. colonial governor William Bligh PRINCIPAL THEATER(S): Sydney, Australia MAJOR ISSUES AND OBJECTIVES: Bligh, with typical bluster, sought to rule Australia with an authoritarian hand; the local liquor interests and military commanders sought to deny his authority and have him removed from office. OUTCOME: Bligh was […]

PRINCIPAL COMBATANTS: Irish convicts vs. British colonial authorities in Australia PRINCIPAL THEATER(S): New South Wales MAJOR ISSUES AND OBJECTIVES: The convicts, feeling unjustly imprisoned, rebelled, seeking to escape the penal colony. OUTCOME: The rebellion was suppressed and its leader publicly executed. APPROXIMATE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF MEN UNDER ARMS: 266 convicts; 56 colonial troops CASUALTIES: Convicts, […]

Japanese offensive in the Owen Stanleys, 21 July-26 September 1942. Scene of a bitterly fought and difficult offensive in New Guinea during July-November 1942, in which the Japanese sought to capture Port Moresby by an overland route following the defeat of a naval operation to seize that place. The Japanese began landing near Gona on […]

Gulf of Oman: an Iraqi motor vessel is intercepted by HMAS Darwin. Gulf of Oman, a series of incidents during September-October 1990 in which warships enforced maritime trade sanctions imposed by the United Nations Organisation against Iraq, following that country’s invasion of Kuwait on 2 August. The Australian vessels involved were units of a three-ship […]

Turkey, heart of the Ottoman Empire, had joined the Central Powers in October 1914.Through a combination of botched diplomacy, neglect, and underestimation of the ability of Turkey to put up much of a fight, leaders in England and France rather suddenly found themselves confronted with a new set of major problems growing out of the […]

Lieutenant Colonel Les Andrew VC and the New Zealand 22nd Battalion at Helwan after their return from Crete, July 1941. As the exhausted Anzacs stumbled off ships at Suda Bay and took stock of their new surroundings, the prospect of an epoch-making battle against German paratroopers was far from their thoughts. Most were intent on […]

The smouldering remains of an accidental fire which began in the supply dump on North Beach at about 1 am on 18 December 1915, the day before the final stage of the evacuation. The fire, at first thought to have been deliberately started by treachery, threatened to alert the Turks to the evacuation in progress […]

Swearing Allegiance to the Southern Cross, watercolour by Charles Doudiet, Art Gallery of Ballarat. Depiction of the Eureka Stockade by Beryl Ireland (1891) The spark that detonated rebellion came in October 1854 with the murder of a digger. The culprit, his mates had good reason to think, was the publican of the Eureka Hotel at […]