7 September 1914
A joint Australian army-navy expedition, the AN&MEF sailed for German New Guinea from Port Moresby embarked on board the auxilliary cruiser HMAS BERRIMA, escorted by HMAS AUSTRALIA, HMAS SYDNEY, HMAS ENCOUNTER, HMAS WAREGO, and HMAS YARRA, together with submarines HMAS AE1 and AE2.
On 2 September Sydney, Encounter, Berrima and Aorangi received orders to sail for Port Moresby where they arrived on 4 September to take on coal and oil and rendezvous with the remainder of the RAN fleet, the Kanowna and several colliers. While in Port Moresby the ANMEF’s military commander, Colonel W. Holmes, inspected the men of the Kennedy Regiment who, although full of enthusiasm, were deemed to be unprepared and ill-equipped for active service. Consequently he recommended that they be returned to their home state. It transpired that the matter was resolved for him when the firemen in the ship in which they were embarked, the Kanowna, mutinied, refusing to carry out their duties. This demonstration was centred on them having not volunteered for overseas active service. Kanowna was subsequently ordered to proceed directly to Townsville, taking no further part in proceedings.
The rest of the force, then comprising Sydney, Encounter, Parramatta (Lieutenant W.H.F. Warren, RAN), Warrego (Commander C. L. Cumberlege, RAN) Yarra (Lieutenant S. Keightley, RAN), AE1, AE2, Aorangi, Berrima, the oiler Murex and collier Koolonga sailed on 7 September bound for Rossel Island and a rendezvous with HMAS Australia which took place two days later. There Admiral Patey, Colonel Holmes, Captain Glossop, Commander Stevenson and Commander Cumberlege, of the destroyer flotilla, discussed the final plans for the attack on German New Guinea culminating in the release of an operational order for an attack on Rabaul.
Two points had been chosen for the landings, one at Rabaul, the seat of Government, the other at Herbertshöhe on the Gazelle Peninsula, New Britain. It was decided that the naval contingent should undertake the landing at Herbertshöhe. Patey’s orders were that should a preliminary reconnaissance of Blanche Bay reveal it to be empty of enemy ships, Parramatta was to examine the jetty at Rabaul and report whether Berrima could berth there. Sydney, which had embarked 50 men of the naval contingent prior to sailing from Port Morseby, would meanwhile transfer 25 of them to the destroyers Warrego and Yarra for landing four miles east of Herbertshöhe. The remaining 25 remained in Sydney to be landed at Herbertshöhe along with a 12 pounder gun. From there they would proceed inland to locate and destroy the enemy wireless stations. Intelligence indicated that two enemy wireless stations were operating in the area, one inland from Kabakaul at Bitapaka and the other at Herbertshöhe.
Elsewhere in the Pacific, a three funnelled warship flying the French flag, dropped anchor just off the North-West corner of Fanning Island, a low coral atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Two boatloads of men rowed ashore. they were from the German cruiser NURNBERG and the proceeded to wreck the cable station on the island. They harmed noone, but a demolition crew blew up the generators and accumulators and used axes to smash up the control room instruments and batteries. The landing party also looted all the gold sovereigns from the superintendent's safe where they found Alfred Smith's treasure map showing where he had hidden the spare instruments and the Fanning Island Volunteer Reserver's arms and ammunition. These were duly dug up and destroyed.
Meanwhile, the NURNBERG's companion ship, the Bremen class crusier LEIPZIG, had earlier hauled up the Fanning-Fiji cable, but dragged it out only as far as the shallow reef, where fortunately for the British, it could quite soon be dredged up and reconnected.