Michael Piggott’s ‘New Feller Master: Beyond the Trenches Australia’s Neglected WWI Story’, details Australia’s occupation of New Guinea and challenges familiar national narratives – confronting uncomfortable truths about power, race and legacy.

Two days after it declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, Britain asked the Australian government if it would mind, awfully, taking over the Germany colony in New Guinea on the understanding that any territory gained would “be at the disposal of the Imperial Government for purposes of an ultimate settlement at conclusion of the war.”

Of course, the Australian government obliged. In smart time the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (ANMEF) was formed and soon troops were on board the converted P&O liner, Berrima, and headed north in the company of a naval force of a dozen ships.

Within a couple of days of the ANMEF’s arrival in New Guinea on 11 September 1914, the main German garrisons had been captured. Thirty New Guineans, six Australians and a German were killed in the action. The terms of capitulation were agreed with the Germans on 17 September and the ANMEF occupation of New Guinea – a territory about the size of Victoria with a population of around 400,000 – began. It endured until May 1921.

Piggott says his book is “not a conventional battle history” as “there was so little actual fighting, the occupation so long and the aftermath even longer”. Rather its focus is on the “backgrounds, attitudes, ideas, behaviour, and self image” of the Australians involved, how they approached their tasks and the trailing effects........

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