The dispatch of an Ottoman Army by Australian-led Imperial air power in the Wadi Fara on 21 September 1918 occurred just five years after the advent of military aviation in Australia. In 1914, the fledgling Australian air service operated the flimsy Bristol Boxkite; four years later it was flying the far more advanced Bristol F2B Fighter. This leap forward represented a profound progress in technology that has typified the technical development of aviation, particularly in Australia ever since. Ironically, on 21 September 2014, 96 years after the events of the Wadi Fara, Australian squadrons were again deployed to the same part of the world where they would remain for more than three years on operations against extremist terrorism. Armageddon and OKRA contrasts these events, a century apart, in the context of the development of Australian air power. The book tracks the history where Australia has maintained a balanced air service compelling high technical, logistics and engineering standards, and effective training and command and control systems, for more than 100 years. These processes were as applicable a century ago as they are today. By examining these operational events, the author establishes the connection that access to the technology associated with air power is intrinsically linked to Australia’s enduring foreign and defence policy – more so, that military power is a means to an end, and never an end unto itself.
What is the history behind Australia's relations with the Muslim world, and the Middle East in particular, which led Australia to be described as a frontline of the so-called 'War on Terror'? Australia's encounters with the Middle East have historically been defined through the British Empire, the Commonwealth and, more recently, through its close strategic ties with the US. This book traces the nature of the Australia-Middle East relationship, from an insular 'White Australia' ideology through to the ongoing global impact of September 11 and the decision to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. Comprehensive analysis of these complex ties provides an essential basis for understanding past encounters, evaluating present policies and developing a framework for future interactions. Australia and the Middle East draws together the various dimensions and themes of this relationship from trade and migration, to increasing strategic interest and military involvement in the region.
Australian civilians worked for decades supporting the survivors and orphans of the Armenian Genocide. 24 April 1915 marks the beginning of two great epics of the First World War. It was the day the allied invasion forces set out for Gallipoli; and it marked the beginning of what became the Genocide of the Ottoman Empire's Armenians. For the first time, this book tells the powerful, and until now neglected, story of how Australian humanitarians helped people they had barely heard of and never met, amid one of the twentieth century's most terrible human calamities. With 50 000 Armenian - Australians sharing direct family links with the Genocide, this has become truly an Australian story. Australians' responses to the wider world have a complex history but the humanitarian strand is deeply entrenched. Babkenian and Stanley have done a great service in casting light on this little - known but fascinating story.
For 100 years, the astounding story of Anzac horsemen, cameleers, aviators, rough riders, medics, vets, light and armoured cars hasn’t been told. Until now. Championed by Australia’s Lieutenant General Sir Harry Chauvel they overcame early feeble British political and military incompetence. Fast, open conflict, rather than septic trenches, suited their outback upbringing. Part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, they recovered the Holy Land after 730 years of Muslim control, even saving Lawrence of Arabia and his cause. Their stunning victory at the Battle of Beersheba was the last mass mounted charge of modern times. The ‘great ride’ offensive of the Desert Mounted Corps, with 30,000 horsemen, destroyed the Ottoman Empire and wreaked vengeance for Gallipoli. This is the first detailed account of the extraordinary military campaign that set the stage for today’s Middle East. Dearberg’s Anzac trilogy on World War I is now complete – Gallipoli, France, Palestine.
This book addresses the conflicts, myths, and memories that grew out of the Great War in Ottoman Turkey, and their legacies in society and politics. It is the third volume in a series dedicated to the combined analysis of the Ottoman Great War and the Armenian Genocide. In Australia and New Zealand, and even more in the post-Ottoman Middle East, the memory of the First World War still has an immediacy that it has long lost in Europe. For the post-Ottoman regions, the first of the two World Wars, which ended Ottoman rule, was the formative experience. This volume analyses this complex configuration: why these entanglements became possible; how shared or even contradictory memories have been constructed over the past hundred years, and how differing historiographies have developed. Remembering the Great War in the Middle East reaches towards a new conceptualization of the “long last Ottoman decade” (1912-22), one that places this era and its actors more firmly at the center, instead of on the periphery, of a history of a Greater Europe, a history comprising – as contemporary maps did – Europe, Russia, and the Ottoman world.
Sourced from Oppenheimer's own research and archival material from the Australian War Memorial, Australian Red Cross archives and State Libraries, Australian Women and War contains accounts of women such as Nursing Sister Nellie Gould in the Boer War and Angela Rhodes, the first Australian Military female air traffic controller to serve in Baghdad during the second Gulf War. The book also contains little known accounts of women such as Nurse Ethel Gillingham, one of the only Australian women to be a POW in WWI, and the group of Australian teachers sent to South Africa during the Boer War to work in the internment (concentration) camps.
The importance of the Australian contribution to the Allied war effort during World War I should never be underestimated. Some 400,000 Australians volunteered for active duty, an astonishing 13 per cent of the entire (white) male population, a number so great that the Australian government was never forced to rely on conscription. Casualties were an astonishing 52 per cent of all those who served, ensuring that the effects of the war would be felt long after the armistice. In particular, their epic endeavour at Gallipoli in 1915 was the nation's founding legend, and the ANZACs went on to distinguish themselves both on the Western Front and in General Allenby's great cavalry campaign against the Turks in the Middle East. Their uniforms and insignia were also significantly different from those of the British Army and provide the basis for a unique set of artwork plates.