When the Japanese advance through Southeast Asia and the Pacific forced Allied governments, military personnel and intelligence organisations back to Australia in early 1942, Australia became much more than a military base. It also became a major centre of the Allied intelligence war against Japan. Australian, American, British, Dutch and Read more
Dutch and Indonesian involvement in Allied special operations, 1942–1945 Research by Peter Dunn OAM Following the Japanese conquest of the Netherlands East Indies in early 1942, Australia became a base for clandestine intelligence and special operations into Japanese-occupied territory. These operations involved a complex and changing network of Australian, Dutch Read more
Introduction Following the Japanese conquest of the Netherlands East Indies in early 1942, Australia became the principal base from which Dutch military, intelligence and government organisations attempted to maintain contact with the occupied territories and prepare for an eventual Allied return. What developed was not simply a Dutch intelligence operation. Read more
On 27 March 1948, Adolf Petrus Gerardus Mulder and his wife, Cornelia Wilhelmina Maria Mulder–van Riek, departed Rotterdam aboard the motor ship Talisse. Known as Dolf and Corrie, the young couple had been married for less than a year. They were part of one of the earliest organised groups of Read more
Wil Hamers, Party Apple and the Dutch Catalina intelligence missions On 13 January 1945, a Dutch Catalina flying boat approached an isolated stretch of the east coast of Japanese-occupied Borneo. On board were eight NEFIS intelligence agents — four Dutch and four Indonesian servicemen — together with two rubber boats, Read more
During the Second World War, a large house on a hill overlooking Cairns became one of Australia’s most secret military establishments. Fairview House at Mooroobool, known to wartime personnel simply as the “House on the Hill”, became the headquarters of the Z Experimental Station, or ZES. Established in 1942, it Read more
In the final days of the Second World War in Europe, an extraordinary act of humanity took place in the skies over the Netherlands. For almost six years, Allied and German forces had been trying to destroy one another. Now Allied bomber crews were being asked to fly low and Read more
Dutch post-war migration to Australia is generally regarded as one of the major success stories of Australia’s mass immigration program. Yet migration was not always permanent. A frequently quoted figure suggests that around 25 per cent of Dutch migrants eventually returned to the Netherlands. But how reliable is that figure? Read more
Ferdinand “Ferdi” Boers arrived in Australia from the Netherlands as an 18-year-old toolmaking apprentice in 1954. Although he brought translated apprenticeship papers with him, Ferdi initially had to accept work as a labourer at the Emmco whitegoods factory in Orange, New South Wales. The intervention of an Estonian supervisor eventually Read more
By Julia Weisz This article outlines the journey of Heinrich (Heini) Kuhn and Josefine (Fini) Kuhn, whose lives reflect the experience of many European Jewish families displaced by war, persecution, and political upheaval, and who later became part of Australia’s post-war migrant community. Early life and migration to the Netherlands Read more