Chapter 7: Darwin Days (continued)

The next day we resumed proceedings. There were no other Allied troops on the island which contained about 8,000 Japanese troops. We discovered there was a German priest in charge of a seminary inland who had sent a message that he would like to see us. The Japanese major-general had a Buick staff car which originally had been provided under US lend lease for the Dutch people on the island.

So we drove inland to visit the priest who was about 85 and spoke good English. He had been an internee of the British in the Boer War and a prisoner in the First World War. There were German and Dutch sisters in this seminary. He told us there was a rajah on the island and suggested that if we could contact the rajah and establish that we were in charge, we would have control of the island in about half an hour. He asked whether we had brought some symbol of authority. I suggested the staff car containing the rajah would be an ideal symbol.

George Smallman (left) and Allan Cornish at Milne Bay, Papua, April 1943.

I recruited a Malay and taught him how to do a steering column gear change on the staff car. We then collected the rajah whom we took for a tour of the island. He was an Indonesian.

His presence in the car demonstrated our authority. We moved to his palace and stayed there for about ten days. It was an intriguing place because it contained bamboo piping which was connected to a water reservoir. There was no taps so the water ran all the time.

We supervised the collection and destruction of all the Japanese small arms. We also arranged the destruction of some Japanese six inch naval guns by ordering the Japanese to place a shell down the muzzle and another in the breech and fire the gun by remote control.

Bureau of Meteorology