Kokoda: Why Was Australia So Unprepared For The Pacific War? (Part 1)

Why was Australia so unprepared for war in the Pacific? How did the Great Depression shape the men who would fight on the Kokoda Track? Why did the volunteers of the Second AIF call the militia 'choccos'? Join Al Murray and James Holland for part 1 of Kokoda, a series on the 1942 campaign in Papua. Before a shot is fired on the Track, they set the scene: the mountains and clans of Papua, the Australia of the 1920s and 30s, the disarmament and Singapore strategy that left it exposed, and the two armies, volunteers and militia, who would have to fight side by side. Start your free trial at ⁠patreon.com/wehaveways⁠ and unlock exclusive content and more. Enjoy livestreams, early access, ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and a weekly newsletter packed with book deals and behind-the-scenes insights. Get your WHW Merch here! A Goalhanger Production Produced by James Regan Editor: Charlie Rodwell Assistant Producer: Alfie Norris Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Social: @WeHaveWaysPod Social Producer: Harry Balden Email: [email protected] Membership Club: patreon.com/wehaveways Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 2:20Speaker 03

  The Australian digger moved in for the final fight. He looked at his mates. During torrential tropical downpours, they'd worn their rubberised ground sheets as capes and looked like gaunt, shining grey ghosts as they slowly waded through waist-high swamps. The lethargic flow of the brackish water had also borne the incomplete maggot-infested Japanese corpses to softly nudge them or float slowly past. If you needed a shit here, you didn't have toilet paper, so you wiped your arse with your hand or sand or leaves

• 2:57Speaker 03

  and then washed it in the swamp. And hungry, just one feed a day. To all euphoria, this was a bastard of a place. And that was Peter Brune in his book entitled, A Bastard of a Place.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  And now we hear from Chester Wilmot, who was, who was there, Jim, reporting. Now and then we pass the stretcher case. The stretchers are only two saplings with a blanket strung between them and sewn up with a lawyer vine. But they do. It's hard enough to keep your feet with only a pack and rifle on your back. It's a miracle how they carry those stretchers. But they get through, even though it takes eight men all day to move one stretcher case back three or four miles. But the troops up forward are holding on, giving them time to get all the wounded out. They put one stretcher down by the track for a moment to give the fellow a rest from the jolting. He's got a bedraggled, half-damp fag in his mouth and he asks for a match. Mine are damp, they've been damp all the week. But Ozzy has some waxes he's carefully preserved in an oil silk tobacco pouch. We give him a light, roll another cigarette

• 4:02Speaker 00

  for him and he says, "Thanks mate, a smoke helps a lot. I'll be okay now." They left him gently but he winces as the slow agonising jolting begins again. Then a fellow I went to school with calls down the track. He used to be a good left-hand bowler, but he won't bowl for a while. "How did you get that, Bill?" "Ah, we were out on patrol, trying to clear that ridge on the left. We got him off it, but three of the boys got knocked. We started to carry him in but the nip saw us and got behind us just at dark. First we knew was a shower of grenades. We blazed around and after a bit they pulled out, but it wasn't easy fighting and looking after the wounded too. They got butch biscuit and most of us got hit somewhere, but we carried them all back." I watch him go off down the

• 4:43Speaker 00

  track. It'll be nearly a week before he reaches hospital and he has sound legs. For fellows with leg wounds and for stretcher cases, it may be twice as long. That was Chester Wilmot reporting in an article entitled, "And Our Troops Were Forced to Withdraw." So welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland, your pommy guides through this epic.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  We're finally going Aussie.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  We're finally going Aussie for this staggering feat of arms through 1942 to the beginning of 1943, the battles for Papua New Guinea. And this story, we've, we've been doing the podcast for seven years now, and there's been people nipping at our ankles saying, "When are you going to do Kakáda?"

• 5:26Speaker 03

  When are you doing Kakáda, mate?

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Exactly. Mate, mate, you haven't done Kakáda yet, why not? We're going to start with the Kakáda battles because there's Sanander and Boona and Gona and all these other encounters that the Australians have with the Japanese. But, but this is an epic story. And Jim, at the festival, you spoke, didn't you, to John Partial about 1942 as the year, the hinge of fate, the idea that things, you know, get off to a very bad start, then by the end of the year, things are looking a lot better. Well, I think this campaign is completely symbolic of that and tells that story in a way that's almost too on the nose. You know, from the, from the hardscrabble beginnings the Australians

• 6:09Speaker 00

  have here in Papua New Guinea, in Papua, and then the, the way that they have to learn their lessons and figure out how to defeat the Japanese. It's all in this campaign.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  It's the same old story, isn't it? It's the same story, you know, of everyone fighting in this alien landscape for which, which no one's prepared. This doesn't look like Salisbury Plain. This doesn't look like the kind of sort of parade grounds of Canberra. I mean, it's just, no one's prepared for this. And it's a bit like, you know, the British in the Arakan or something, you know, pounding those, pounding those infantry battalions against dug-in Japanese on the, on the north-west coast of Burma and getting a bloody nose every single time. And then, and then Slim coming in and going, you know what, we need to sort of change this around a little bit. And it's the same kind of thing, isn't it? Lack of preparation, lack of forethought, all the rest of it. And then, and then slowly

• 7:02Speaker 03

  but surely, working it out, working it out the hard way and coming out on top. I don't think that's too much of a spoiler alert.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  Well, and the Japanese being wedded to their errors, that the Japanese are such creatures of habit and are so locked into their way of doing things that they can't, that what you see again is that the Japanese don't learn. They think they've learned their lessons. They think they know what they're doing. And the Australians, the allied side, learn and change in the face of what's going on. Although they then, they then make a series of blunders after the Kakáda campaign that are quite hard to reconcile with how, how cleverly they've adapted to, to fight the Japanese. But basically, this is, this is an absolutely extraordinary epic story of grit and determination and courage, and also

• 7:49Speaker 00

  of some of the most fantastically complex backstabbing politics you could ever get, you could ever get your teeth into. The political aspect of all of this is absolutely boggling.

• 7:59Speaker 03

  And great characters from, from, from the top to the bottom. I mean, at the top, oh my God. I mean, talk about the cast list. You've, you've said so many times over the last few years, "Why does Hollywood make it up?" I mean, and here's a classic, isn't it?

• 8:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's bonkers, the whole thing. But we should, what we ought to do really is, is talk about where this campaign is happening and why. Because we've often talked about British imperial campaigns. And we, you know, we know, we know that Burma's next to India and that's the threat. That's the, that's the point. And that Singapore's the bastion of the, the empire in the, you know, the gateway to the east and all this sort of stuff. But where the hell is Papua? What on earth is Port Moresby and why does it matter?

• 8:39Speaker 03

  Well, yes, I think we should definitely do all that. But I also think, I also think what we need to do is, is do a bit of, bit of Australia background as well.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  You know, because, because I know, obviously all Aussies know this, but most people who don't know Australia don't know it. And I think it's, it's really good to kind of delve into an area which is not widely known outside of a certain, certain field and give it some proper context before we actually get into the kind of the meat of the, the story of the Kakáda trail.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So Papua New Guinea, PNG, as it's often known, is 150 miles from Australia. The capital city of Papua is Port Moresby, which is on the Australian southern side of, of it. And you've the, the Owen Stanley Range, huge mountain range in the background, and the Kakáda Track or Trail. And there's, there's, there's historiographical argument about what you should call it a track or a trail is out there, for those of you who can be bothered to follow it up. But it's just south of the equator. The main island consists of 80% of PNG's landmass. Then there's other 600 other surrounding islands dotted

• 9:47Speaker 00

  around. And the east-west mountain spine, the peaks are 13,000 feet plus. So it's this insane jungle wilderness wasteland. There's rivers, creeks, there's volcanic action, there's very rich soil, there's little coastal lowlands, extremely thick rainforest and jungle elsewhere. Now, very much, and then breaks in the rainforest and kunai grass and all this stuff. You know, the people that live there, the locals that live there, they've been burning and clearing and planting, which means you have this vegetation regrowth, you do have clear spaces. But it's extremely hot, it's very humid, it rains basically all year, but it's extremely wet, October to May.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  This is sort of subsistence farming, isn't it?

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  In, in the interior, it's all sort of subsistence stuff, isn't it? It's, it's, you know, slash and burn stuff, isn't it?

• 10:39Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly right. And, and a sort of, and an effort to colonise it and get farming going there of, of sort of cash crops, but not particularly successful by, by Australia is the thing. And that it can also be extremely cold at night. And if you're under the canopy in the jungle, it can be as dark as night time during the day because the jungle is so thick. So, so you're looking at an extremely hostile landscape. There's 700 languages in the country before the Second World War because...

• 11:14Speaker 03

  So that's basically every tribe, right?

• 11:16Speaker 00

  Basically, everyone's got their own, their own, their own local dialect, their own language. Because, because they're all living in this profound isolation, profoundly diverse, profoundly isolated. Um, and there's, there's, you know, these tribes that slash and burn and move about, and there's space for them, for these small tribes to live. And they're eating taro, saggo, sweet potato, bananas, leafy veg, they're hunt- hunting reptiles, fish, there's pigs in the jungle, all this sort of thing.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Unspeakable snakes, insects, all that kind of stuff, isn't it?

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's the kind of environment where, you know, if you, if you get, if you cut yourself, the, the wound will, the wound will, you know, brew up immediately and you're, you're in trouble with jungle sores.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  And you're going to get leeches everywhere, aren't you?

• 12:02Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. The local people have this, uh, system called One Tok, which is the pidgin word for one talk, which basically means there's, there's a language that binds Papuans through language and kinship, and it's the basis as well of their welfare system. So the tribe, each One Tok, provides food, goods, hospitality and security. And the key principle of One Tok is the idea of payback, that, that there's retribution against the other clans for wrongdoing, disputes over land, food, women, territory, which means that there's often wo- warfare between the different tribes all the time. And basically, this warfare will carry on until everyone had agreed that, you know, the ledger had

• 12:44Speaker 00

  been balanced, that equal suffering loss had been inflicted, and sometimes compensation, the odd dabble with cannibalism.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  It sort of begs the question, doesn't it? Why, why, why start in the first place?

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Well, yes, of course. But this is pre-Second World War. Their big neighbour is Australia, and this is, this is, you know, this, this trading, coastal trading, island dwellers, all this sort of stuff going on. In the 19th century, New Guinea is divided into three areas of European rule by November of 1884. So this is during the sort of rush for Africa and all sort of stuff, you know, where the world's being, the world's being carved up with straight borders all over the world.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  Yes, this is the imperialistic growth of the 19th century, isn't it?

• 13:27Speaker 00

  Exactly. So, so you've, you've basically three, three players. On the 3rd of November, the north eastern section is declared a German protectorate. On the 6th of November, the south eastern section is declared a British protectorate, and the western half of the island remains in the hands of the Dutch East Indies, um, under Dutch control. Australia is federated in, on the 1st January 1901, so five years later, the British dependency becomes Australian territory and is named Papua. During the First World War, the Australian seas take the opportunity to take the northern east half of the eastern part of the mainland from the Germans, and New Britain and the islands from Bougainville to admiralties. So basically, there's some Australian spread. The Australians think, well, we've been involved

• 14:10Speaker 00

  in the First World War, we're part of the First World War, part of the British imperial effort, we'll have some of this stuff for ourselves. The Australian, uh, uh, Prime Minister, a fellow called William Morris Hughes, gets a mandate for the German possessions at Versailles. It's all above board and, and legal.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  Well, of course, of course, after the First World War, the Germans lose all their overseas territories, you know, all of them gone. And they're sort of split up, aren't they? But as you say, because, because Australia's been federated, and is now a dominion rather than part of the empire, it's, it's kind of almost independent, isn't it?

• 14:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:48Speaker 03

  It's still part of the Commonwealth, part of, part of the British Empire, but, but it is its own entity.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So certainly at this end of the world, Australia can flex its muscles and hoover up territory around it as it sees it. The proper mandate begins in 1920, and the Australians set up civil administration over, over the land, uh, uh, over, over Papua New Guinea. But it's, it's such a challenging place that this, this idea of imperial expansion is quite difficult. So you've, the, the lieutenant governor is Sir Hubert Murray, um, who dominates, um, the history of Papua from 1906 to 1939. Um, and he's from Sydney, he's an Irish Catholic from Sydney, um, and he went to Oxford, which shows that sort of backwards and forwards, to and fro, within the imperial setup. You come to the imperial centre, you get your education, you go back to Australia with

• 15:36Speaker 00

  your credentials in place. And he's the chief judicial officer in Papua in 1904. It's his vision, it's his place. The idea is, that, that his commission that he set up, the Royal Commission, the idea is, come here and grow rubber, come here and grow hemp, tobacco, copper, exploit the mining resources, come here and get rich.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Do you know who worked on a copper plantation here?

• 15:57Speaker 00

  Yes, I do. Yes, yes.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  Errol Flynn.

• 16:00Speaker 00

  His absolutely amazing stories, yes. Errol Flynn, that's right.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  And he get, he gets sacked because he starts shagging the, he shags, shags the owner's wife.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's that amazing story with the duck, with the pieces of fat and the, on a piece of string, where the duck eats the fat and shit, shits the fat out, and there's a great long string of ducks on a piece of string. Anyway, yes, so that's the calibre of the fellow attracted to the P and G, to the Papua project, is Errol Flynn.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  Very good. Errol Flynn before he was famous.

• 16:34Speaker 00

  Before he was famous, yeah.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  But basically, the issues, the issues that, um, Sir Hubert Murray has to deal with, the lieutenant governor has to deal with, is how you deal with white land tenure, and how to utilize indigenous people as a cheap labour supply. So the, so the, the classic colonial problems. And obviously, um, he's giving out land leases for mining and plantation. I mean, they're good conditions if you're starting, if it's a start-up, no payments required for the first 10 years, if you take out a 30-year, uh, uh, period lease, because only the government can buy Papua land. So the officials have to confirm that the natives are happy to sell the land, and that the land isn't going to, is not required or likely to be required by the native owners themselves. So there's immediately,

• 17:20Speaker 00

  there's obvi- and there's a tension there, isn't there, between the Australians and the locals?

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Yes. But inevitably, the land is, that's being taken is on the coast, isn't it? I mean, that's where the settlement's happening. I mean, no one's really interested in going to Cacoda.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Into the interior. No, no one's much interested in going into the interior. He succeeds in attracting European settlers, um, away from Australia, um, to Papua. And within four years, um, the commission, they have 360,000 acres under lease, and there's 140 plantations in Papua by 1910.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  I mean, that's quite a lot, isn't it?

• 17:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. There's gold, and you know, Australia's had, Australia's had an, had an enormous gold rush in the 1840s. There's a taste for it in Australian culture, there's a, there's a, and it's the gold rush in the 1840s that destroys the, the convict project, because, you know, um, what's so bad about being sent somewhere where there's gold? But the mining is dependent on, on local labour, cheap indigenous labour. There's this thing of indentured labour, where the natives will sign on as indentured labourers for 18 months to three years, and it's, you know, 50 hours a week, Sundays off, the plantation owner has to provide shelter and food, it's 10 shillings a month, there's discipline maintained through the threat of the district magistrate. So it's all pretty exploitative.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  But I, but I think the, you know, the, the, the sort of the great imperial expansion, I mean, it's tough for everyone involved, isn't it? I mean,

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  The, the, the potentials are what is luring people, whether it's gold or just making money from huge plantations or whatever. But, but, but, you know, make no mistake, this is a, it's a tough gig, right?

• 18:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  Despite its proximity to Australia, it's still a really, really harsh, harsh landscape, which just rains the whole time, it's incredibly hot and humid, there's mosquitoes, there's horrible insects, there's these horrible snakes and disease and dengue, dengue fever and yellow fever and blackwater fever and just every other fever under the sun. And, and you know, your chances of getting through unscathed are, are quite low, aren't they? I mean, either this is, this is a time where people are pioneering and resilient and adventurous and, and unscrupulous as well at times, and tough and...

• 19:30Speaker 00

  Or killed by, killed by the, the place they go to make their fortune, is the truth. And that the locals, of course, are not resistant to Western diseases, it comes in, but the Westerns are not resistant to the local disease as well. So there's this sort of, there's this transmission of, of, of pathogens. It's all, I mean, it's, the work is hard, the diets are interesting, it's, it's, it's all very, very, very tough. But in the early years of, um, uh, of Murray's administration, the key technique is to deploy small patrols to keep peace in the interior. So that's a European officer with six to 12 Papua police officers, and they're, they're instructed to fire on the tribesmen if they're attacked

• 20:12Speaker 00

  first. There's this aggressive patrolling going out from Port Moresby. And Murray likened this to, uh, this, the oil stain policy used in Indochino. He says, "A postal station was like a spot of oil which slowly expanded up to a certain point when dropped upon a surface. If enough drops fell, then the whole area would be covered by their slowly widening to merge with each other." Mixed success, but by 1939, there are nine administrative divisions in Papua. Papua's kind of under Australian control by this point, but it's all quite vague, and it's certainly not been mapped,

• 20:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  or any of, or any of that stuff, or surveyed, um, extensively. You've Christian missions active in Papua since 1890. So there's a conference, a religious conference in Port Moresby in 1890, and then, and then, and then basically, it's parcelled up into areas of influence for the different Christian missions, to sort of keep them occupied. There's the London Missionary Society on the southern coast, Anglican Mission takes the north coast, and Methodists take the eastern islands. The Catholics are not represented at the conference, but they later secure Yule Island opposite the mainland region, and the Seventh Day Adventists establish themselves along the Cacoda Trail. To think that this is next door to Australia, which by this point, although, you know, northern

• 21:29Speaker 00

  Australia, Arnhem Land and all that, is this great gigantic inhospitable wilderness, isn't it, essentially? That this is so isolated, so, so far from Sydney and the sort of Australian centre of gravity, and yet is going to become absolutely crucial to the Australian war, war and war effort.

• 21:49Speaker 03

  It's crucial because it's only 150 miles away, and the main settlement is on the south coast, i.e. facing the northern coast of Australia. And, and, you know, you can't be Australia and have enemy troops 150 miles away breathing down your neck, you just can't.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  But if you are a pre-war planter in Papua, you're isolated, you're vulnerable. Um, you're living this this really, really, really tough frontier life in a in a place that's completely inhospitable. In between the wars, there'd been, you know, there'd been a little boom when the place got going, but actually it's hard to turn a profit there. Competition is high. Um, you know, competitors could operate with imported labour, more modern transport systems, and the sort of plantation dream of Papua has not come off. And so for war to come to a place like that is going to be possibly a complete, a complete disaster.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  Yes, and Murray, who's this towering figure on Papua New Guinea's colonial story, he dies in 1939. So suddenly, this person who's so kind of invested in PNG, who who kind of knows it inside out and would have been incredibly useful person to have at the helm when the Japanese do strike, is not there.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  His legacy, though, is lots of people with local knowledge, white planters, miners, district magistrates, and actually a relationship with the local people, with the Papua and people, at least an understanding.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  Which is reasonably okay, isn't it?

• 23:26Speaker 00

  And don't forget that the Japanese, when they entered the mix, are going to handle things with their usual tact and diplomacy in in terms of dealings, dealing with the local population. Um, uh, so, you know, but really, the Australians, the Australians have not considered Papua in terms of its military strategic significance at all, because they are, after all, relying on Singapore, that they've outsourced their military security, their defence posture has been outsourced to the British, to the British Empire, to the, to Singapore being this cornerstone of defence that will, that will deter the Japanese. No one in their right mind would imagine a Japanese intervention that would

• 24:07Speaker 00

  bring the Japanese within striking range of Australia, would they? Not in 1939, 1940, not even in 1941, nobody.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  Well, and also, Japan is thousands of miles away. It's, it's a long way north from from where they are at the moment.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  But also, the Australians, if they're going to fight, they're probably expecting they're gonna, it's going to be a reprise of the First World War, like everyone else, that they'll be going to North Africa or somewhere, fighting in the, fighting in the Mediterranean theatre, or in India, or somewhere like that, but they're not going, they're not going to have to fight on their doorstep in this place that's basically like the surface of the moon, in terms of how hostile it is to just normal life, let alone, let alone fighting.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Or, or, albeit a jungle-infested surface of the moon, yeah. It's just, it's just not on the radar, is it?

• 24:53Speaker 00

  Exactly right. We'll take a break here, and we'll come back and we'll look at Australia, um, uh, between the wars and and its military posture, which I think is quite interesting. We'll see you in a tick.

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• 26:41Speaker 00

  Welcome back to Where Voice and Make You Talk. Me, I'm Ryan James Holland, and part one of our Kokoda Trail series. And we've been looking at Papua itself, Papua New Guinea, where it sits in the Australian setup. We should come over to Australia, because who are the men that end up fighting in Papua New Guinea?

• 26:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because, because they're mainly people who who've been born into this recently federated Australia, this dominion of the of Britain, with its own government and own prime minister and and a growing sense of identity. You know, there's, there's no question, I think, you know, I mean, the clever, the clever dicks like to point out that there were more French and British in in Gallipoli than Aussies or New Zealanders. But, but, but that's the kind of downplay, the proportional role, which was huge, um, by by the Australians and New Zealanders. There's no questioning that, that, that the landing at Anzac Cove, the battle for Gallipoli, is very much the

• 27:40Speaker 03

  sort of spiritual birth of of the Australian nation, isn't it? It, that, that battle, that calamity, seals a sense of identity, which, which runs through right through to sort of Mel Gibson making his movie, through to the Australian cricket team stopping to visit it before they start on the ashes.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  Back in 1993 or whenever it was, and so on. And there is a sense of national pride, intense loss and grief following the, the kind of slaughter there. Nearly all interwar Aussie children grow up near war memorials and churches and schools and towns and, and so on. And there is this huge surge of patriotism, isn't there, and confidence, weirdly, that that follows the First World War in Australia. It's really, it's really interesting, isn't it? Because, because, you know, the Aussies do incredibly well in the First World War, but, but, you know, Gallipoli's a defeat. I mean, obviously, the Allies win in 1918, but, but out of this slaughter comes this tightening of of nationhood. And in a way,

• 28:43Speaker 03

  that's quite odd, I think. Maybe it's not odd. I don't know. What, what do you think?

• 28:46Speaker 00

  Well, I think it's fascinating, isn't it? Because, because at some point, you need to define your relationship with the mother country, don't you? If you're a colony, at some point, particularly at this distance. You know, I was, yesterday, I went to the National Archive, and they have an exhibition about the American Revolution. And, you know, there's Burke saying, this place is too far away. I'm trying to, trying to deal with what's happening in in America is essentially impossible, because, you know, once you've found out what's going on, you come up with a solution, you've replied, there's nothing you can do about it. And Australia's that, that time, you know, even with the invention of the telegram, for instance, Australia, Australia completely fits that. It's too far away, it's too distant. And at some point, and, you know, federation sets the ball rolling,

• 29:28Speaker 00

  but it really is Gallipoli, that redefines the relationship with Britain as much as anything else. It says, okay, we're Australians now. We're not, we're, we're, we're something else. We're our own, we're our own entity. And, you know, it's the price paid, paid in blood. If you want, if you want to create a nation, put it through this sort of terrible mortal fire. And I think, you know, you're absolutely right, Jimmy. It resets the relationship with Britain. Because after all, Australia has had two, you know, at least two flows. You've the, you've the, the idea of respectability, the people who weren't convict, uh, uh, didn't have the convict stain, as they would call it, and all this and that. And then the, and then the people who'd been sent there who absolutely hated and despised Britain because

• 30:12Speaker 00

  they'd been exiled, because they'd been rejected. You know, the Irish contingent in Australia, extremely robust attitude to the British. And you get this, you get this merger of those two feelings in a new nation as a result of Gallipoli, I think. I mean, I, you know.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, I'm sure you're absolutely right. But anyway, there's this big surge of, the, the, the, the, long and short of it is, there is this huge surge of patriotism and some growing sense of confidence in, in, in this new nation. And the excitement of the possibilities, you know, these towns, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, you know, Perth, they're all, they're all starting to grow, aren't they? In Brisbane, these centres and and there's, there's huge farming, there's an expansion of iron and steel industries, because there's incredible rare earths and stuff in Australia. There's big capital works programmes of harbour development. I mean, look at Sydney. I mean, it's the most incredible place, isn't it?

• 31:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  Bridge building, road construction, land settlement programmes, increasing migration. And the theory of the Prime Minister Bruce government from 1923 to 1929 is, is lots of capital works programmes, uh, which makes them more modern and more efficient. That gives you more opportunity to develop the transport network, which then means your production costs are lower, which means your export prices are more competitive, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, to be, to be honest, this is exactly how America expands in the 1920s too, with the advent of the automobile. This idea that you can suddenly get there faster, which means you can expand, which means you can, you can travel quicker and more cheaply, which means you can, you know, you can, you can move goods from A to B quicker,

• 31:50Speaker 03

  and everyone gets richer. And there's also huge expansion in aviation in Australia, because it's so vast.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  And massive Australian heroes in the 1920s, you know, are the, are these, these pioneers of aviation. There's these air races across Australia, which are absolute front page news, the newsreels come out, you know, everyone, everyone's watching it, waiting for them to land after their epic journeys, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, this allows the country to become connected.

• 32:20Speaker 03

  Internally, from one side of the coast, you know, in the western coast of the eastern coast, or the northern coast of the southern coast, but it also allows them to be connected to the rest of the world. And, you know, just a couple of sort of, of key events, of twenty eighth of February nineteen twenty eight, Bert Hinckley becomes the first person to fly solo from Australia to England. I mean, that's a hell of a thing in nineteen twenty eight, when you think that, you know, it's only the year before that Lindbergh has crossed the Atlantic. And then on the ninth of June nineteen twenty eight, Kingsford Smith and Charles Olm become the first aviators to cross the Pacific. They land Southern Cross, their plane Southern Cross at Brisbane, after three days and ten hours of flying.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  Crikey.

• 32:57Speaker 03

  It's amazing stuff. You know, wow, it is crikey and a strife. And it's, you know, it's kind of, you can see why people are kind of, you know, throwing their hats in the air and cheering, can't you? I mean.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  It's your roaring twenties, Australian style, isn't it, essentially? You know, you've got materialism, social progress, the car comes along. So Holden's motor body builders are granted exclusive rights to build car bodies on imported American chassis from nineteen twenty four. So in come the chassis and Holden, Holden will do your cab. The Melbourne Cup is broadcast on radio for the first time in nineteen twenty five, Australia's love affair with horse racing, farlap and all that. Household appliance is becoming more accessible. And cinema, there's the spread of cinema. So it's proper. In nineteen twenty seven, the Duke and Duchess of York opened the first Commonwealth Parliament session in Canberra. So there's,

• 33:56Speaker 00

  there is still this strong sense of Britishness woven into Australian identity. But it is, I think, the thing you always have to say after that. And this will be key when young Australians go to fight and die for the British Crown. But I just think always you've always got to, that just has to be qualified every time you say it. And because after all, there's still, there's still this imperial flavour, atlases in Australian schools are very imperial, Indonesia is labelled as the Dutch East Indies, Malaysia is Malaya and Singapore, because that's where, that's what these places are called at the time. Thailand, Siam, yeah, Thailand is Siam. The Philippine Islands have United States written underneath. The British Empire is all in red. I mean, of course, the Philippines do, because the Philippines

• 34:39Speaker 00

  are part of the American empire, and the Americans don't have an empire. If you go to school in this interwar era, your history lessons are Romans in Britain, Norman conquest, Crusades, Magna Carta, Tudors, Shakespeare, British imperial power. So basically.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  Sixty six and all that. I mean.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  Exactly. You took the words right out of my mouth.

• 34:58Speaker 03

  But the problem with all that is it means you've got an immense ignorance on all things to do with Southeast Asia. You know, you know, nothing of China, nothing of Japan. You don't know much about New Guinea, even though that's sort of part of, part of where you are. You don't, you don't really, it's just not on your radar. You know, your, your world is, is a white European Caucasian world, isn't it? I mean, that's, that's the point. And Bill Spencer is, he's, he's, he's a, he's a schoolboy in the, in the nineteen thirties. And as an adult, he recalls, Britain was our ideal. If it was British, it was best. The substantial red shadings on any world map seemed ample proof of this and gave us

• 35:42Speaker 03

  great confidence. But then, of course, the depression, because it reaches everywhere.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  Exactly. No matter how far away you are, the Wall Street, Wall Street crash will get you, one way or another. And the historian Peter Brune says.

• 35:55Speaker 03

  If the pride and patriotism of the Great War had provided the impetus for the boom years and confidence of the nineteen twenties, then the Great Depression of nineteen twenty nine to thirty three attacked the fundamental assumptions of Australian society. The personal security could be assured by hard work, self-reliance, independence, mateship, family solidarity, and compassion for your fellows. Family.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Family. Mateship. Central concept in Australian, in Australian culture. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and, and that this meant that lots of people felt they'd had the rug pulled from under them. And that the world was against them, international forces of doom were against them. And at the height of the depression, one in three working Australians was out of work. Which is amazing. One million unemployed Australians out of the country's entire population of just over six and a half million. I mean, that is, that is brutal, isn't it?

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Boy, is it ever.

• 36:50Speaker 00

  There's no welfare state, there's no safety net. The employer can fire workers.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Mate, you're fired.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're fired, mate. Nah, can't afford you anymore, mate. You're off. You're on your act, mate. I mean, this is a massive, massive blow. And there were sustenance coupons. But you have to have been out of work for a fortnight, fourteen days or more, and have no alternative means of earning money. And if you're a recipient of a sustenance coupon, you are a sasso.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  I love the way the Aussies just reduce everything to ending in O.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, Jimbo.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  We've had an overseas player there. We've had an overseas player playing for Chor Valley CC called, called Matt Watson. And so obviously, he's been called Wadi.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  Of course. I mean, you'd be wasting your time calling him anything else. The Australian journalist Philip Knightley, he says, being a sasso was a demeaning experience for an Australian man. First, he had to admit to himself that he could no longer support his family. Then he had to queue at the Government Labour Exchange to register as unemployed. There to be mocked by public servants. Then there was a humiliation of using the special shops and thus revealing to your neighbours that your family was on sustenance. You know, I mean, I think this is, this is the global experience of unemployment. This is one of the things that, one of the things that radicalises Germany so thoroughly, isn't it? And everyone's going through this. To sustain their boom, the Australians have been borrowing an awful lot in the twenties. And they, by nineteen twenty nine, they owe

• 38:24Speaker 00

  the, they owe Britain two hundred and twenty five million pounds. And their exports have collapsed by half between nineteen twenty eight and nineteen thirty one. Lots of Australians who go on to fight in Papua are joining the workforce during or just after the depression. So leave in its shadow.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  And Bill Spencer, yeah, he's, he's growing up, we had earlier on, didn't we? He goes, as I look back on the depression's child and the society that nurtured him, I've come to realise that the soldier is a by-product of the society into which he is born. That great economic disaster was actually the making of us. Out of our relative hardship came the realisation of initiative, of the value of social groups, family friends, sporting and club organisations, and perhaps the belief that the group was more important than the individual. When adults around us were down and nearly out during those troubled times, we too learned that there were only you and your mates to drag you forward. I mean, it's mateship again, isn't it? But, but, but it's very interesting, because

• 39:22Speaker 03

  I do remember so clearly interviewing all, so many American soldiers who'd lived through the nineteen thirties, you know, and, and, you know, and I would say, one in two had lost a parent before they were twelve, or before they were fifteen.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  You know, all of them would talk about hardship, all of them would talk about how they had to get out and work, you know, before they were kind of need to hydro grasshopper, you know, trying, struggling to make, make ends meet. Obviously, you know, here in the UK, there's something like fourteen million below the poverty line, which is obviously an absolute disgrace. But I think today, in our times of comparative plenty, we have no idea just how hard it was in the nineteen thirties, this, this shock. You have this incredibly rapidly evolving world, which is emerging in the first decades of the twentieth century. You then have this catastrophic global war. Then you have the Great Depression, which is this sort of absolute hammer blow after everything everyone's been through.

• 40:21Speaker 03

  And it, it is such a kick in the teeth to absolutely everybody. And it does make people tough and resilient. And they've already, you know, by the time a war comes, they've already lived through this period of unbelievable hardship, that, that we just don't recognise to this day.

• 40:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. If it doesn't break you, it turns you into the, it turns you into these, into very tough people. However, there's the side story here, because, because the state in which the Australians are able to defend Papua is very much influenced by what happens in between the wars in terms of Australia's military preparation or lack thereof. So obviously, after the First World War, the Australians are all in with pacifism, disarmament, essentially cutting and disbanding the Australian Armed Forces in the nineteen twenties. Half of the Australian Navy is taken out of commission by the Prime Minister. But they're broke. Well, it's not that they're broke, it's they don't want to, people don't want to spend this money anymore. And, and of course, you don't need a great big army if in Australia, who's possibly going to come for you? You know, it doesn't make any sense that you

• 41:22Speaker 00

  might need to defend yourselves, does it? He cuts the citizen military forces, which is the Australian militia, who aren't allowed to leave the country. So they're like a volunteer force who aren't allowed to leave the country, to twenty five percent of its former strength. He discharges seventy two army officers. This basically means the cadre of experienced people are gone from the army. So rebuilding an army when the moment comes might be more, that much more difficult. And the Australians also are leaning into what there is of their sea power and their air power. So the army is last on the shopping list, like, like in, in Britain. But it's Singapore, we talked about Singapore, that's the, the real problem. And it's the British Dominion Pacific Strategy during the nineteen twenties, where basically

• 42:03Speaker 00

  spending on Singapore is put off, put off, put off, put off. Singapore's made more vulnerable as it goes. There's a forty percent cut in military funding in the nineteen twenties, and Singapore's on the receiving end. There's obviously less British naval power in the Pacific, less power projection. Singapore is obviously, as we know, and we will at some point, sweet listener, get to this, is exposed to attack from the landward side. Singapore isn't being prepared for, as a military base really, or for a siege. And as threats of German and Japanese expansion gear up in the thirties, and the international order begins to sort of unravel, the Australians basically hope that naval and air power and British diplomacy and deterrence will protect them and their territories. And obviously,

• 42:46Speaker 00

  this is in the shadow of Japanese, you know, with, with Manchuko nineteen thirty one, as Jonathan Fennell will, will, will tell, tell you that that's when this starts, the whole thing.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 42:56Speaker 00

  And it's war in China, the rape and nan king. It's quite clear that the Japanese are determined to expand and to, and to take what they want. And that also, the allies are inside the Japanese naval ciphers and have a pretty good idea of what, what's going on and what the Japanese, what Japanese intentions might be. You know, there's been this sort of hollowing out of Australian Armed Forces, a failure to read the intentions of possible antagonists. Stop me if you've heard this one before. And you come to nineteen thirty nine, when the war comes, and the Australian Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, and is he Menzies or Mingies?

• 43:37Speaker 03

  I think he's Menzies, isn't he?

• 43:39Speaker 00

  I think he's Menzies. If he was British or Scottish, he'd be Mingies, wouldn't he? Anyway, on the third of September thirty nine, he says, all right, we're in, we're at war with Nazi Germany. Um, which is, you know, a big decision for a government to make when it doesn't really have an army. And there were big debates about conscription in the First World War. Two referendums were held during the First World War, um,

• 44:02Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 44:03Speaker 00

  conscription. And, and they were both lost by the pro conscription, um, uh, uh, lobby, which is really interesting, isn't it?

• 44:11Speaker 03

  They did it anyway.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  They do it anyway, but isn't that fascinating though? That, that, that, you know, they're, they're British up to a point, aren't they? Um, and the, um, the government is very reluctant to pursue conscription. So they create what's called the Second Australian Imperial Force, the AIF, the two AIF. It's political expediencies. It's not really what the army wants. Uh, so the second AIF, it's a volunteer expeditionary force. Um, it starts out as one infantry division and related auxiliary components. It means that all battalions in the AIF, in the second AIF are all two fourteenth or two second or whatever. They always have a two before their number because they're from the second AIF.

• 44:50Speaker 03

  Which again underlines the importance of the First World War, doesn't it? Don't you think?

• 44:54Speaker 00

  Oh, completely. Whatever we're doing, we're following the footsteps of the first AIF. Whatever we're doing is in the, is in reflection of it or reaction to it. It starts out as a single infantry division and related auxiliary components. And they're not regiments. It's not, they're not the, the Victorians and the New, they are, they are recruited locally, but they're not identified as such. So you don't have the, you know, the, the, the, the Bendigo rifles or whatever, or the, uh, uh, you know, Walamaru fusiliers. It doesn't work like that. They're two, but second whatevers. Um, and, um, one of the commanders in Sydney Rowell, who's an actually important Australian military figure in the Cacoda campaign, he says, "This was a decision which was to bedevil the army until the end of the war with its

• 45:38Speaker 00

  division of the service into what was in effect two armies." Because you've got the AIF itself proper and the militia, which is a real problem. And there is obviously

• 45:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  the initial volunteers are people joining up as out of a sense of duty to the British Empire, but also there's, you know, obligations of the citizen, travel, adventure, wearing a uniform, seeing the world, all that sort of stuff.

• 46:03Speaker 03

  And there's mateship. There's mateship. People are joining up together. They're, they're, they're joining up in, in, you know, in, in droves. So they're, they're doing it en masse.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  Make no mistake, there's a chance to write yourself into history and, and, you know, their fathers, their uncles, their grandfathers, some of them are, are those men from the First World War, from the first AIF. And

• 46:24Speaker 03

  It's employment.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  It's employment. Yeah. Yeah. If you're an AIF man, if you join the second AIF, you get five shillings a day, food and lodgings, which is more than the, than if you're a Sussow.

• 46:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  Um, although there are some who take a pay cut i- i- in joining. This is so interesting, this, this division that you end up with between the, between the, the army and the militia. Because, you know, and you've got lots of people who don't join the AIF and won't, and they don't, because they don't think Australians should go fight anywhere else. They should only defend Australia.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Why should they? It's nothing to do with us.

• 46:56Speaker 00

  Exactly. Long way away.

• 46:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:58Speaker 00

  I mean, it's a, talk about a far off land of which we know nothing, right? I mean, Chamberlands, Chamberlands.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. If you get Czechoslovakia, this is a different, you know, interior of Papua New Guinea.

• 47:10Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  The, the Western desert in Egypt, Suez Canal, Southern Mediterranean, no thanks. And also, you know, but there's the usual reason why people don't join as well, you know, the sort of, um, um, people are ill and, and, and still on their backs because of the, of, of the depression. Loads of people got reserve occupations. I mean, farmers are still need to produce food and all the rest of it. But, but, but there are quite a large number of Australian men willing to defend the nation, but there's no kind of consensus at all on, on how. And so, yes, I mean, you mentioned in the militia a minute, a minute ago. So there's the AIF, the Australian Imperial Force, um, but the throwback to the First World War. But there's also the Australian militia and the AIF derisively

• 47:55Speaker 03

  refers to the militia as chockeys, militia as chockeys or koalas. And that's so Australian. So the chockeys, they're coming from the comic operetta, uh, the chocolate soldier. So they'd all melt if they were ever in combat. That's just so brilliant. And koala, not to be exported or shot at, because they're already this sort of high status beast on the native, native, um, native bear, aren't they? Uh, and, and the AIF wear metal shoulder badges that spell out Australia. And they was like, you know, so, so an AIF man going past a militia would go, "Get a bit of weight on your shoulders, mate." That's the idea of kind of sort of getting a little bit more, well, you needed some metal.

• 48:38Speaker 03

  And, um, and, and the militia in return are kind of, you know, just think, think the AIF are kind of arrogant and label them as five bobber day murderers. The Pappy campaign ultimately of course brings, brings these two, um, the, these, these two different factions, I should say, within the, you know, Australian military together. But anyway, the first, the first division, the first volunteer AIF Australian Imperial Force Division, uh, that is raised after the outbreak of war is the sixth division. And boy, of a impressive if North Africa. And for those of you who listen to our Alamein series, um, you will may remember that the sixth Australian division played an absolutely key role in Supercharge,

• 49:21Speaker 03

  which is the second part of the Alamein battle. And they're the ones that actually forced the breakthrough in the, in the northern bit. And those of you who haven't listened to it, um, I would urge you to go back through the, uh, through the library of episodes and dig it out. But the Aussies are great. I remember interviewing a whole load of Aussies who were in the sixth division and they were just absolutely superb. And then the seventh division, which will be the most important one in the Cacoda campaign story, they're formed in May, 1940. And they're dubbed the deep thinkers by the original sixth division because of their aim of delaying Johnny A. I mean, it's absolutely on the money Aussie humour, isn't it all this?

• 49:59Speaker 00

  The, the band, the band is completely priceless. Yeah, absolutely. High quality sledging. Um, yeah, he's a deep thinker. It took him eight months to decide to join the army.

• 50:12Speaker 03

  Love it.

• 50:13Speaker 00

  So as a, as a, for instance, you've George Babe Luskum travels from Adelaide to volunteer for the AIF and he joins the South Australian two twenty second twenty seventh battalion AIF. So there you go. The two is the second AIF, the twenty seventh is the battalion, because there was a twenty seventh battalion that existed in the First World War, and this is the new iteration. So there's, there's a deliberate heritage underlining saying this is a new army, but an echo of the old army.

• 50:40Speaker 03

  And there's an aspiration built into that, isn't there, to emulate that? That's the point.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  I think it's really, really clever. In the absence of a regimental system, this is, this is really very much the way to go, isn't it? Um, uh, i- i- in the absence of your county regiments or your, or your, you know, your military heritage, like the buffs or whatever, you've got a, you've got a thing here where you can,

• 51:01Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 51:01Speaker 00

  you can dig into this thing that's, that's captured people's imaginations. The recruiting band is supposedly eighteen to thirty five, but you have people, most people in their mid twenties, but plenty are cheating, lying about their age, um, who are fifteen and some as old as sixty. And we will encounter some older soldiers in the Cacoda battle.

• 51:18Speaker 03

  I'm thirty five, mate. Honestly, God, I'm only thirty five. Falling apart, the scenes are looking like a walnut.

• 51:25Speaker 00

  The battalions are divided up. Um, you, you, you know, once you're in, you, you, you do your medical examination, you're sent into a rifle company and the battalions, they have four, four rifle companies, a hundred and twenty nine soldiers each, commanded by a captain or major. I mean, it's, you know, it, it's very much the, the, um,

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Same, same as the British, British army model.

• 51:41Speaker 00

  British, British army model. Each company's three platoons, commanded by a lieutenant, platoon, has three sections of ten men, commander, corporal, everyone else is in company HQ.

• 51:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  Standard, completely standard. Um, and you've, you know, you live together, eat together, complain together, fight together and, and, you know, and, and banter together and sledge together, which is the, which is the Australian, the Australian flavour here. Um, and, you know, the, the, the battalion headquarters will have its commanding officer, his two ICs, adjutant, intelligence section and so on, a regimental, regimental aid post, of course. And, and the medicine in Cacoda becomes extremely challenging because of the environment and a padre. Headquarters company, six platoons, signals, anti aircraft, mortars, armored car, pioneers, transport and so on. The Australian army has this, you know, um,

• 52:33Speaker 00

  it's, it's much more level than the British army. I think it's fair to say that, you know, we, we, we've seen enough sort of toffs having to mix it with, with ordinary people in the, in, in the British army. It's much more level. It's much more like the American army, the Australian army. I think it's, I think it's fair to say.

• 52:52Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, it's not quite as class, is it? And, and, and Peter Brune says, says, "For a nation that prides itself on its egalitarian outlook, the army was perhaps the ultimate model of equality. In action, a soldier's civilian vocation, his pay, his social standing, his religion and his standard of education all came to naught. When the enemy attacked you or you attacked them, no such distinctions were made or were relevant." So Seventh Division, AIF, uh, comprises of the eighteenth brigade, the twenty first brigade and the twenty fifth brigade. And the Seventh Division becomes known as the Silent Seventh. And its campaign wouldn't receive much recognition or publicity at

• 53:35Speaker 03

  all. But that is the beating heart of, of the force that is going to be pounding down the Cacoda trail. And that's where we're going to be, well, we're going to be, in the next episode, we're going to be looking at the politics behind it and some of the key characters. We'll be revisiting MacArthur and this amazing character, General Blamey. Oh my goodness me. Can't wait.

• 53:58Speaker 00

  Can't wait.

• 53:59Speaker 03

  But I just, I hope everyone's found this, this background kind of helpful of sort of positioning it, the kind of the atmosphere, who the Aussies are, uh, um, what their makeup is and, and the relationship of Papua New Guinea to Australia and its location and so on. I think it's important to kind of have that grounding before we get into the kind of the meat of the action.

• 54:19Speaker 00

  And some of the cliches, let's say this out loud now, some of the cliches are cliches because they're true. This, there is very much, and it's, and it, and I think it really is a product of, of Gallipoli and the depression, this spirit in the Australian, in the Australian army, the digger spirit, you know, this idea, an idea of Australian masculinity and of the back chat and the banter, the sledging, and the fact that it's, that it's level, officers and men all in together. I think is that, that, these are only cliches because they're, because they're true and will be borne out by the story of the Cacoda, Cacoda battle. Um, but the politics is a snake pit. We'll look at that in our next episode. Um, if you want to hear that next episode straight away, go to our Patreon, become a We Have Ways to Make You Talk Patreon member. Ad free listening will be yours. And, um, uh,

• 55:04Speaker 00

  the next, uh, installment of this epic encounter will be in your ears as soon as you want it. We'll see you soon. Cheerio.

• 55:12Speaker 03

  Cheerio.

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