The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Volume X: The Australians at Rabaul
Australian Military History World War I Pacific Theater Naval & Maritime History Colonial Campaigns Official / Government History Biography & Unit Histories
The Australians at Rabaul is the long-out-of-print tenth volume of the legendary Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, and it remains the most detailed account of Australia’s first shots of the Great War. In 412 crisp pages, Colonel S. S. Mackenzie traces the raising of the 1st Royal Australian Naval Bridging Train and the Australian Naval & Military Expeditionary Force, their swift seizure of German New Guinea in August 1914, and the subsequent garrison years on the tropical outpost of Rabaul. Readers get front-row access to signal logs, personal diaries, and after-action reports that have never been reprinted elsewhere, making this 1993 paperback the easiest way to own the official narrative without hunting down fragile 1920s hardbacks.
Collectors prize this volume because it completes the set that most Australians never finished—bookstores usually carried only the Western Front and Gallipoli titles, so Rabaul copies were routinely read to pieces. Inside you’ll find the names of the first Australian fatalities of the war, the story of how the AIF’s longest-serving prisoners of war were taken here, and the forgotten naval minefield plans that shaped Allied strategy in the Pacific. The 1993 edition uses high-quality acid-free paper that has stayed bright, and the sewn binding lays flat for comfortable reference work.
For family historians, this is the go-to source for locating ancestors who served in the Pacific: every officer and NCO is indexed, and the appendices list honours, casualties, and embarkation rolls. Military modellers and wargamers value the 1:50,000 trench-map style sketches of Bitapaka Ridge and Takubar Bay gun positions—maps that remain the most accurate ever published. Whether you are filling the last gap in your Official History set, researching Australia’s colonial campaigns, or simply want a readable, self-contained account of a largely overlooked victory, this very-good-condition, smoke-free copy delivers authoritative detail at a fraction of the cost of the original 1927 printing.
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