Eighty years of regional engagement: from Part 1 - The concept of an army’s influence abroad

On 20 March 1939 the Burns Philp ship MV Macdhui docked at Port Moresby in the Australian territory of Papua. On board was the 13th Heavy Battery of the Royal Australian Artillery. Commanded by Major Kenneth Chalmers, the battery had been raised from permanent gunners in Sydney and had the task of installing and operating two 6-inch coast guns at Paga Point, Port Moresby. Less than four months earlier, on 6 December 1938, the Minister for Defence, Geoffrey Street, as part of a series of measures to strengthen Australian defences after the Munich crisis, had announced funding for the development of Port Moresby as ‘a base for mobile naval and air forces’.