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

0:02Al Murray: Thank you for listening to We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Sign up to our Patreon to receive bonus content, live streams and our weekly newsletter with money off books and museum visits as well. Plus early access to all live show tickets. That's patreon.com slash we have ways.

0:23Al Murray: Hi, this is Gary Lineker from Goalhangers. The rest is football. This episode is brought to you by WISE. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies.

0:59Al Murray: Most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid-market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today. Be smart, get wise, T's and C's apply. This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just$15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like All I Want. Right. Okay, we can afford that. You know what, forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain.

1:36Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

1:40Al Murray: Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for a 12-month plan required,$15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Twas many nights before Christmas, and one woman knew she needed a Christmas tree, so to Wayfair she flew. Finding just the right one, and for years it will last. Wayfair shipping was free, and remarkably fast. What's this? Garland? A wreath? Essentials to host? Good thing she celebrates way longer than most. As her cart filled with magic and decor from the heart, Merry Christmas to all.

2:14Get your Wayfair Head Start. For holiday decor you can count on year after year, Wayfair delivers.

2:32The 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 ass with your hand or sand or leaves and then washed it in the swamp. and hungry just one feet a day to all who thought of you this was a bastard of a place.

3:21And that was Peter Broon in his book entitled A Bastard of a Place.

3:29Al Murray: And now we hear from Chester Wilmot 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 loyavine. 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.

4:02Al Murray: 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 waxies. he's carefully preserved in an oil silk tobacco pouch. We give him a light, roll another cigarette for him and he says, thanks mate, smoke helps a lot, I'll be okay now. They lift 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.

4:34Al Murray: 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 it 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 Bissett and most of us got hit somewhere but we carried them all back. I watch him go off down the 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.

5:11Al Murray: So welcome to We Have Ways That Make You Talk with me, Al Murray, and James Holland, your pommy guides through this epic... We're finally going Aussie. 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 been doing the podcast for seven years now, and there's been people nipping at our ankles saying, when are you going to do Kokoda? When are you doing Kokoda, mate? Exactly, mate. Mate, you haven't done Kokoda yet. Why not? We're going to start with the Kokoda battles because there's Sananda and Buna and Ghana and all these other encounters that the Australians have with the Japanese.

5:52Al Murray: But this is an epic story. And Jim, at the festival, you spoke, didn't you, to John Parshall about 1942 as the year, the hinge of fate, the idea that things, you know, get off to a very bad start. And 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 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 it's the same old story isn't it it's the same story you know of everyone fighting this alien landscape for 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 you know um the British in the Arakan or something you know pounding those uh pounding those infantry battalions against dug in Japanese on the on the northwest 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 then slowly but surely working it out working out the hard way and coming out on top i don't think that's too much of a spoiler alert 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 Kokoda campaign that are quite hard to reconcile with how how cleverly they've adapted to uh to fight the Japanese but basically this is this is a an absolutely extraordinary epic story of grit and determination and courage and also of some of the most fantastically complex backstabbing politics you could ever get your teeth into.

8:09Al Murray: The political aspect of all of this is absolutely boggling. And great characters from the top to the bottom. I mean, at the top, oh my God. I mean, talk about the cast list. 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? Yeah, it's bonkers, the whole thing. But we should, what we ought to do really is let's talk about where this campaign is happening and why. Because we've often talked about British imperial campaigns. And, you know, we know that Burma's next to India and that's the threat. That's the point. And that Singapore's the bastion of the empire in the, you know, the gateway to the east and all this stuff.

8:46Al Murray: But where the hell is Papua? What on earth is Port Moresby and why does it matter? Well, yes, I think we should definitely do all that. But I also think what we need to do is do a bit of Australia background as well. Yeah, yeah, exactly. 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 really good to kind of delve into an area which is not widely known outside of a certain field and give it some proper context before we actually get into the meat of the story of the Kokoda Trail. Absolutely. So Papua New Guinea, PNG, as it's often known, is 150 miles from Australia.

9:26Al Murray: The capital city of Papua is Port Moresby, which is on the Australian southern side of it. And you've the Owen Stanley Range, huge mountain range in the background, and the Kokoda Track or Trail. And there's historiographical argument about what you should call it, a track or a trail, is out there. For those of you who couldn't be bothered to follow it up. but it's just south of the equator the main island consists of 80 percent of png's land mass then there's other 600 other surrounding islands dotted 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 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 this is sort of subsistence farming isn't it yeah for in the interior it's all sort of subsistence stuff isn't it it's um you know slash and burn stuff isn't it exactly exactly right um and and a sort of and an effort to colonize it and get farming going there of sort of cash crops but not particularly successful by by australia is the thing um 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 nighttime 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 so that's basically every tribe right 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 sago sweet potato bananas leafy veg they're hunts hunting reptiles fish there's pigs in the jungle all this sort of thing unspeakable snakes insects all that kind of stuff isn't it yeah yeah yeah and it's the kind of environment where you know if you if you get if If you cut yourself, the wound will, you know, brew up immediately and you're in trouble with jungle sores.

12:12And you're going to get leeches everywhere, aren't you?

12:14Al Murray: Exactly, exactly. The local people have this system called one-tok, which is the pigeon word for one-tok, which basically means 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 Wontok is the idea of payback, that there's retribution against the other clans for wrongdoing, disputes over land, food, women, territory, which means that there's often 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 been balanced, that equal suffering loss had been inflicted and sometimes compensation the odd dabble with cannibalism it sort of begs the question doesn't it why why why start in the first place well yes of course but this is pre-second world war their big neighbor 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 yes this is the imperialistic growth of the 19th century isn't it 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 southeastern section is declared a British protectorate and the western half of the island remains in the hands of the Dutch East Indies under Dutch control.

13:57Al Murray: 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 admiralty's so basically there's some australian spread the australians think well we've been involved 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 um for the german possessions at versailles it's all above board and and legal well of course of course after the first world war the germans lose all their overseas territories you know that all of them gone and they're sort of split up aren't they but as you say because because of australia's being federated and is now a dominion rather than part of the empire it's it's kind of almost independent isn't it yeah it's still part of the commonwealth part of part of the british empire but but it is its own entity 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 they australian set up civil administration over the over the land over over papenegui 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 papa from 1906 to 1939.

15:35Al Murray: And he's from Sydney. He's an Irish Catholic from Sydney. 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 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 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. Do you know who worked on a copper plantation here?

16:09Al Murray: Yes, I do. Yes, yes. Errol Flynn. His absolutely amazing stories. Yes. Errol Flynn, that's right. And he gets sacked because he starts shagging. He shags the owner's wife. Yeah, there's that amazing story with the duck with the pieces of fat on a piece of string where the duck eats the fat and 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 Papuan project, is Errol Flynn.

16:45Al Murray: Errol Flynn before he was famous. Before he was famous, yeah. But basically, the issues that 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 labor 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 there's a startup 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 papuan 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 this obvious and there's a tension there isn't there between the australians and the locals 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 kokoda 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 i mean that's quite a lot isn't it yeah there's gold and you know australia's had australia's 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 labor cheap indigenous labor there's this thing of indentured labor where the natives will sign on as indentured laborers 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 magic magistrate so it's all pretty exploitative 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 yeah the the the potentials are what is luring people whether it's gold or just making money from huge plantations or whatever but but yeah but you know make no mistake this is a it's a tough gig right yeah despite his proximity to australia it's still a really really harsh harsh landscape where it 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 black water fever and just every other fever under the sun and and you know your chances of getting through unscathed are quite low aren't they i mean you know this is this is a time where people are pioneering and resilient and adventurous and and unscrupulous as well at times and tough and 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 westerners 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 diet's uninteresting 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 twelve papuan police officers and they're they're instructed to fire on the tribesmen if they're attacked first there's this aggressive patrolling going out from port moresby And Murray likens this to the oil stain policy used in Indochina.

20:36Al Murray: 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 nighed 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 or any of or any of that stuff or surveyed extensively you've christian missions active in papua since 1890 so there's a conference of religious conference in portmores 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 of methodists take the eastern islands the catholics are not represented the conference but they later secure yule island opposite the mainland region and the seventh day adventists establish themselves along the kokoda trail to think that this is next door to australia which by this point although you know northern australia arnhem land and all that is this great gigantic inhospitable wilderness isn't it essentially that this is so isolated so far from sydney and the sort of Australian centre of gravity.

21:56Al Murray: And yet it's going to become absolutely crucial to the Australian war and war effort. 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, you know, you can't be Australia and have enemy troops 150 miles away breathing down your neck. You just can't. But if you are a pre-war planter in Papua, you're isolated you're vulnerable um uh you're living this this really really really tough frontier life in a place that's completely inhospitable in between the wars they'd been you know they'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 um imported labor more modern transport systems and the sort of plantation dream of papa 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 yes and murray who's this this towering figure on pap new guinea's colonial story he dies in 1939 so suddenly this person who's so kind of invested in png 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 his legacy though is lots of people with local knowledge um white planters miners district magistrates and actually a relationship with the local people with the papuan people at least an understanding which is reasonably okay isn't it and don't forget that the japanese when they enter the mix are going to handle things with their usual tact and diplomacy in terms of dealing 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 defense posture has been outsourced to the british to the british empire to the to singapore being this cornerstone of defense that will that will deter the japanese no one in their right mind would imagine a japanese intervention that would bring the japanese within striking range of australia would they not in 1939 1940 not even in 1941 nobody 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 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 they'll be going to north africa or somewhere fighting in the fighting in the mediterranean theater 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 albeit a jungle infested surface of the moon yeah it's just it's just not on the radar is it exactly right we'll take a break here and we'll come back and we'll look at um australia um uh between the wars and and its military posture which i think is quite interesting we'll see you in a tick

25:22The holidays are busy enough. Getting your home ready shouldn't be. From the perfect tree and twinkling lights to festive decor for inside and out, Wayfair has everything you need to get your home holiday ready. Find furniture, hosting essentials, festive serveware, and more all in one place. So you can spend less time getting ready and more time enjoying the season with the people who make it special. Shop Wayfair.com today to make holiday magic at home.

25:49Al Murray: Wayfair, every style, every home. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer.

26:45Not all subscriptions eligible. Savings not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected payment account required. See experience.com for details.

26:54Al Murray: Welcome back to We Have Ways to Make Your Talk. With me, I'm Iron James Holland. And part one of our Kokoda Trail series. And we've been looking at PAPA 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? Yeah, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? because they're mainly people who've been born into this recently federated Australia, this dominion of Britain with its own government and own prime minister and growing sense of identity. You know, there's no question, I think. You know, I mean, the clever dicks like to point out that there were more French and British in Gallipoli than Aussies or New Zealanders.

27:37But that's to kind of downplay the proportional role, which was huge, by the Australians and New Zealanders. There's no questioning that the landing at Anzac Cove, the battle for Gallipoli, is very much the sort of spiritual birth of the Australian nation, isn't it? That battle, that calamity seals a sense of identity, which runs through right through to Mel Gibson making his movie, through to the Australian cricket team stopping to visit it before they start on the ashes back in 1993 or whenever it was, and so on. And there is a sense of national pride, intense loss and grief following the kind of slaughter there.

28:24Nearly all interwar Aussie children grow up near war memorials and churches and schools and towns and so on. And there is this huge surge of patriotism, isn't there? And confidence, weirdly, that follows the First World War in Australia. It's really interesting, isn't it? Because the Aussies do incredibly well in the First World War. 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 that's quite odd i think maybe it's not odd i don't know what what do you think well i think it's fascinating isn't

29:01Al Murray: 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 uh burke saying this place is too far away um trying to trying to deal with what's happening in in america is essentially impossible because you know once you 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 is that that time you know even with the invention of the telegram for instance australia australia completely fits out it's too far away it's too distant and at some point and you know Federation sets the ball rolling, but it really is Gallipoli that redefines the relationship with Britain as much as anything else.

29:46Al Murray: It says, OK, we're Australians now. We're not. We're something else. Yes, yes, yes. We're our own. We're our own entity. And, you know, it's the price 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 idea of respectability, the people who weren't convict didn't have the convict stain, as they would call it, and all this and that. And then the people who'd been sent there who absolutely hated and despised Britain because they'd been exiled, because they'd been rejected.

30:27Al Murray: You know, the Irish contingent in Australia, extremely robust attitude to the British. And you get this merger of those two feelings in a new nation as a result of Gallipoli, I think. Well, yeah, I'm sure you're absolutely right. But anyway, there's this big surge of... The long and short of it is there is this huge surge of patriotism and some growing sense of confidence in this new nation and the excitement of the possibilities. You know, these towns, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, you know, Perth, they're all starting to grow, aren't they, in Brisbane. Yeah. These centres and there's huge farming, There's an expansion of iron and steel industries because there's incredible rare earths and stuff in Australia.

31:12There's big capital works programs of harbour development. I mean, look at Sydney. I mean, it's the most incredible place, isn't it? Bridge building, road construction, land settlement programs, increasing migration. And the theory of the Prime Minister Bruce's government from 1923 to 1929 is lots of capital works programs, which makes them more modern and more efficient and 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 etc etc and you know 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 and everyone gets richer and there's also huge um expansion in aviation australia because it's so vast yeah 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 news rules come out you know everyone's watching it waiting for them to land after their epic journeys etc etc and of course this allows the country to become connected internally from one side of the coast you know in the western coast to the eastern coast or the northern coast the southern coast but it also allows them to be connected to the rest of the world and you know there's a couple of sort of um of key events of 28th of february 1928 but hinkler becomes the first person to fly solo from australia to england i mean that's a hell of a thing in 1928 when you think that um you know it's only the year before that linbergh has crossed the atlantic and then on the 9th of june 1928 kingsford smith and charles ulm become the first aviators to cross the pacific they land southern cross their plane southern cross of brisbane after three days and 10 hours of flying it's amazing stuff you know wow it is crikey and uh a strafe and it's um you know it's kind of you you can see why people are kind of you know throwing their hats in the air and cheering can't you i mean

33:24Al Murray: it's your roaring 20s australian style isn't it essentially you know you've got um uh materialism social progress the car comes along so uh holden's motor bodybuilders are granted exclusive rights to build car bodies on imported American chassis from 1924. So in come the chassis and Holden will do you your cab. The Melbourne Cup is broadcast on radio for the first time in 1925. Australia's love affair with horse racing, far lap and all that. Household appliances becoming more accessible. And cinema. There's the spread of cinema. So it's pretty proper. In 1927, the Duke and Duchess of York opened the first Commonwealth Parliament session in Canberra.

34:07Al Murray: um so there's 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 um 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 um and because after all they're still there's still this imperial flavor atlases and australian schools are very imperial Indonesia is labelled as the Dutch East Indias, Malaysia is Malaya and Singapore, because that's what these places are called at the time.

34:42Al Murray: Thailand, Siam. Yep. Thiam 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 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... 1066 and all that. I mean... Exactly. You took the words right out of my mouth. But the problem with all that is it means you've got an immense ignorance on all things to do with Southeast Asia.

35:20You know nothing of China, nothing of Japan. You don't know much about New Guinea, even though that's sort of part of where you are. You don't really... It's just not on your radar. You know, your world is a white European Caucasian world, isn't it? I mean, that's the point. And Bill Spencer, he's a schoolboy in the 1930s. 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 great confidence. But then, of course, the Depression, because it reaches everywhere.

35:59Al Murray: Exactly. No matter how far away you are, the Wall Street crash will get you one way or another. And the historian Peter Broon says, If the pride and patriotism of the Great War had provided the impetus for the boom years and confidence of the 1920s, then the Great Depression of 1929 to 1933 attacked the fundamental assumptions of Australian society. that personal security could be assured by hard work, self-reliance, independence, mateship, family solidarity and compassions for your fellows. Family. Family. Mateship. Central concepts in Australian culture. Yeah, exactly. And this meant that lots of people felt they'd had the rug pulled from under them and that the world was against them.

36:44Al Murray: International forces are doomed 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? Boy, is it ever. There's no welfare state. There's no safety net. The employer can fire workers. Mate, you're fired. Yeah, you're fired, mate. No, I can't afford you anymore, mate. You're off. You're on it. You're out, mate. I mean, this is a massive, massive blow. And there were sustenance coupons.

37:21Al Murray: But you have to have been out of work for a fortnight, 14 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.

37:36I love the way the Aussies just reduce everything to ending an O.

37:42Al Murray: Yeah, Jimbo. We've had an overseas player there. We've had an overseas player playing for Shaw Valley CC called Matt Watson. And so obviously he's been called Waddle. Of course. I mean, you'd be wasting your time calling him anything else. The Australian journalist Philip Knightley, he says, being a susso 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.

38:19Al Murray: You know, I mean, I think this is the global experience of unemployment. This is 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 20s. And by 1929, they owe Britain£225 million. and their exports have collapsed by half between 1928 and 1931. Lots of Australians who go on to fight in Papua are joining the workforce during or just after the Depression, so living its shadow. And Bill Spencer, yeah, he's growing up. We had it 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's born.

39:06That great economic disaster was actually the making of us. out of our relative hardship came the realization of initiative of the value of social groups family friends sporting and club organizations 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 i do remember so clearly interviewing all so many american soldiers who'd lived through the 1930s you know and and you know and i would say one in two had lost a parent before they were 12 or before they were 15.

39:50yeah 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 knee hydrographs hopper you know trying struggling to make ends meet obviously you know here in the uk there's something like 14 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 1930s, this shock. You have this incredibly rapidly evolving world, which is emerging in the first decades of the 20th century. You then have this catastrophic global war.

40:29Then you have the Great Depression, which is this sort of absolute hammer blow after everything everyone's been through and it it is such a 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 of war comes they've already lived through this period of unbelievable hardship that we just don't recognize to this day yeah if it doesn't break you um it

40:56Al Murray: It turns you into these very tough people. However, there's the side story here, 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 1920s. 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. People don't want to spend this money anymore.

41:30Al Murray: And of course, you don't need a great big army. If you're in Australia, who's possibly going to come for you? You know, it doesn't make any sense that you 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 25 % of its former strength, he discharges 72 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.

41:59Al Murray: 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 real problem. And it's the British Dominion Pacific strategy during the 1920s, where basically spending on Singapore is put off, put off, put off, put off. Singapore's made more vulnerable as it goes forward. There's a 40 % cut in military funding in the 1920s and Singapore's on the receiving end. There's obviously less British naval power in the Pacific, less power projection.

42:32Al Murray: Singapore is obviously, as we know, and we will at some point, sweet lesson and 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 30s 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, this is in the shadow of Japanese, you know, with Manchukuo in 1931, as Jonathan Fennell will tell you that that's when this starts, the whole thing.

43:09Al Murray: Yes. And it's war in China, the rape in Nanking. It's quite clear that the Japanese are determined to expand 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's going on and 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 1939 when the war comes and the Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies. And is he Menzies or Mingy's? I think he's Menzies, isn't he?

43:52Al Murray: I think he's Menzies. If he was British or Scottish, he'd be Mingy's, wouldn't he? Anyway, on the 3rd of September 1939, he says, all right, we're in, we're at war with Nazi Germany. 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 yeah inscription and and they were both lost by the pro conscription um uh uh lobby which is really interesting isn't it they did anyway they do anyway but isn't that fascinating though that that you know they're pretty sure 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 expediency it's not really what the army wants 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 14th or two second or whatever they always have a two before their number because they're from the second AIF which again underlines the importance of the first world war doesn't it don't you think 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 South they are they are recruited locally but they're not identified as such so you don't have the you know the the Bendigo rifles or whatever or the uh uh you know what Wallamaroo fusiliers.

45:35Al Murray: It doesn't work like that. They're two second whatevers. And one of the commanders in Sydney, Rowell, who's an actually important Australian military figure in the Kokoda campaign. He says, this was a decision which was to bedevil the army until the end of the war with its 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 yeah the initial volunteers of 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 and there's mateship there's mateship people are joining up together they're they're joining up in in growth you know in in droves so they're they're doing it en masse 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 those men from the first world war from the first AIF and it's employment 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 susso yeah um although there are some who take a pay cut in joining this is so interesting this this division that you end up with between the between the army and the militia because you know and you've 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 why should they it's nothing to do with us exactly long way away yeah I mean it's a talk about a far off land of which we know nothing right I mean Chamberlain's Chamberlain's yeah yeah yeah if we get Czechoslovakia this is a different you know interior of fat in new guinea exactly the western desert in egypt suez canal southern mediterranean no thanks i don't say you know but there's the usual reason why people don't join as well you know there's sort of um people are real and and still on their backs because of the 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 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 refers to the militian as chocker and militia as chocos or koalas and that's so australian so the chocos 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 uh native native um native bear aren't they and and the aif wear metal shoulder badges that spell out australia and they would say 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 medal and um and the militia in return are kind of you know just think think the aif are kind of arrogant and label them as five bob a day murderers the papya campaign ultimately of course brings brings these two um these these two different factions i should say within the australian military together but anyway the first division the first volunteer aif australian imperial Force Division that is raised after the outbreak of war is the 6th Division.

49:21And boy, are they impressive in North Africa. And for those of you who listen to our Alamein series, you may remember that the 6th Australian Division played an absolutely key role in Supercharge, the second part of the Alamein battle. And they're the ones that actually forced the breakthrough in the northern bit. and those of you who haven't listened to it, I would urge you to go back 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 6th Division and they were just absolutely superb. And then the 7th Division, which will be the most important one in the Kokoda campaign story, they're formed in May 1940 and they're dubbed the Deep Thinkers by the original 6th Division because of their aim of delay in joining AR.

50:08I mean, it's absolutely on the money Aussie humour, isn't it, all that?

50:12Al Murray: The banter is completely priceless. Yeah, absolutely. High quality sledging. Yeah, he's a deep thinker. It took him eight months to decide to join the army.

50:25Al Murray: Love it. So as a for instance, you've George Babe Luscombe travels from Adelaide to volunteer for the AIF, and he joins the South Australian 2nd 27th Battalion AIF. So there you go. The 2 is the 2nd AIF, the 27th is the Battalion, because there was a 27th Battalion that existed in the First World War, and this is the new iteration. So there's a deliberate heritage underlining, saying this is a new army, but an echo of the old army. And there's an aspiration built into that, isn't there, to emulate that? That's the point. I think it's really, really clever. In the absence of a regimental system, this is really very much the way to go, isn't it?

51:04Al Murray: in the absence of your county regiments or your military heritage, like the buffs or whatever. You've got a thing here where you can dig into this thing that's captured people's imaginations. The recruiting band is supposedly 18 to 35, but you have people, most people in their mid-20s, but plenty of cheating, lying about their age, who are 15 and some as old as 60. And we will encounter some older soldiers in the Kokoda battle. I'm 35, mate! honestly god i'm only 35 falling apart the scenes looking like a walnut the battalions are divided up um you just you know once you're in you you do your medical examination you're sent into a rifle company and the battalions they have four four rifle companies 129 soldiers each commanded by captain or major i mean it's you know it's very much the the um so it's the british british army model british british army model each company's three platoons commanded by a lieutenant platoon has three sections of 10 men come on by corporal everyone else is in company hq so the 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 flavor here um and you know the the the battalion headquarters will have its commanding officer his two ic his adjutant intelligence section and so on regiment regimental aid post of course and and the medicine in kokoda becomes extremely challenging because of the environment and a padre headquarter company six platoons signals anti-aircraft mortars armored car pioneers transport and so on the australian army has this you know um it's it's much more level than the british army i think it's fair to say that you know 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 yes yes yes yes yes it's not quite as class as is it and and peter brune 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 attack them no such distinctions were made or were relevant so 7th division AIF comprises of the 18th brigade the 21st brigade and the 25th brigade and the 7th division becomes known as the silent 7th and its campaign wouldn't receive much recognition or publicity at all but that is the beating heart of of the force that is going to be pounding down the Kokoda 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 mccarthur and this amazing character general play me oh my goodness me can't wait can't wait 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 patria 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.

54:32Al Murray: 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 I think it really is a product of of Gallipoli and the Depression. this spirit 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 these are only cliches because they're, because they're true and will be born out by the story of the Kokoda battle. But the politics is a snake pit.

55:07Al Murray: We'll look at that in our next episode. If you want to hear that next episode straight away, go to our patron, become a, we have ways to make you talk patron, member ad free listening will be yours and um 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 cheerio

55:32Al Murray: it was many nights before christmas and one woman knew she needed a christmas tree so to wayfair she flew finding just the right one and for years it will last wayfair shipping was free and remarkably fast. What's this? Garland? A wreath? Essentials to host? Good thing she celebrates way longer than most. As her cart filled with magic and decor from the heart, Merry Christmas to all. Get your Wayfair Head Start. For holiday decor you can count on year after year, Wayfair delivers. When you're building a company, you learn that trust is what closes deals. You may have the best product, but buyers won't sign without proof that your product is secure, especially if it has AI.

56:12Vanta gets you compliant fast with SOC 2, ISO 27001 and more, and keeps you secure with continuous monitoring. Hyperbound, a YC-backed startup, used Vanta to unlock the Fortune 100 in under a year. Snowfire got audit ready in a month and closed a multi-million dollar deal. Trust matters. Get started at Vanta.com. This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just$15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like All I Want F***. Right. Okay, we can afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're gonna stick with whatever's in the public domain.

56:47Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

56:50Al Murray: Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms.