Why do you think Indonesia would got for PNG? There's no logic to it that I can see. The terrain is just too rough for the effort to be worthwhile.

I agree that Indonesia would be mad to invade in it's RL situation, but if it could have temporarily quelled dissent, perhaps with offers of land for the crowded masses, and organised just their normal standing army, hell, even just a fraction of it, they could have captured, and held (at least to begin with) a sizable area. A totally untenable position in the long term, but if the aim is nothing more than to dump a few million less desirable ethnic minorities....

Indonesia has no hope of defeating Australia, but they could hold some of it provided their logistics were sorted out.

My belief is that Australia won the war, perhaps by throwing the Indonesian military back into the sea, but I can also see a lot of "settlers" showing up, trying to survive for a while before throwing themselves on the mercy of the Australians. With the virtual destruction of mass transport capacity, Australia would have no choice but to absorb them rather than send them back.

Mind you, I'm just throwing ideas out there...

It's worth noting that in the 80's and 90's the Australian military were training to fight the mythical enemy invaders the "Kamarians" who's home country, "Kamaria" was located roughly in the same location as Indonesia...
Yes, there actually were plans to deal with just such a situation.
http://www.4rarassociationsaustralia.com/irc.html
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nati...-1111115959477
http://www.securitychallenges.org.au...rabinSmith.pdf

A decade it two earlier and the mythical enemy was Musoria, which we were told was equipped and organised as well as located in the same general area as the USSR.

PNG
 

I was thinkig they would want it just to deny its use to Australia.

I agree that the invasion might be pulled of as you describe ( and I was speaking T2K and not RL in my post).

Just airing ideas me as well.

Well - if anyone could do it it would be the Indonesians I guess.

As for contingency plans - a friend of mine who had a clerk job at military intelligence swears he saw plans for repelling an attack from "the west" rather than "the east" in a pile of older docs. Meaning that invasion from Britain and the US wasnt entirely ruled out - at least not theoretically :)

About Kamarians - we have them to here. Only we call them Havland ( literally Ocean Land) and they are a sneaky bunch of devious and tenacious
troops from the politically unstable nation of Havland. Every ex we have their special forces try to influence our national decision making by sabotaging our infrastructure and oil and gas facilities. Everytime I tell the brass that next ex we surely must hit back and train for the massive amphibious operation th epunitive expedition to Havland will entail? I mean how many times shall we let tham conduct raids onto our territory before we go for regime change there?

..:D

I never seem to get a full understanding from them on the joke.. I guess after the fall of Musoria we are all wondering what next out on the periphery of the western world..

Australia and New Zealand had the highest casualty rates of all the combatant nations in WW1, and many Ozmates have taken this to be because the British High Command considered ANZAC troops particularly expendable. However, when the casualty rates per unit are examined, they are similar to British losses.
The reason for this was the unique nature of the ANZAC contribution- all teeth and no tail. The ANZACs relied entirely on British logistical, engineering, administrative and medical support, all of which were manpower-intensive; had the Australian and NZ governments insisted on a proportion of their troops being used for these functions, ANZAC casualties would have been similar overall to British ones.
This is not to say that British generals cared about ANZAC troops- just that their callous acceptance of losses, and contempt for the lives of their troops, did not differentiate between nationalities.

The Indonesian invasion of Australia trope seems to be a very salient/significant one in Australian culture -- if I'm not mistaken (and apologies to our Australian members if I am) it gets consideration not only in popular fiction but at least somewhat legitimate political debate concerning the Australian military's capabilities, etc.

Personally, though, I see the regional T2K scenario being one where Indonesia fragments/implodes under the weight of global commerce collapsing and whatever third tier nuclear strikes they caught to take useful facilities off the game board.

Australia I can see getting rocked pretty hard by Soviet megatonnage -- it's solidly enough in the western camp that I could even see the zombies in the Kremlin authorizing a nuke boat to make a run down out from under the polar ice to be able to hit Australia with ordnance if nothing else will reach (I seem to recall a thread about Australia on one board or another where someone looked at the published stats for Soviet ICBMs and wasn't quite sure how you even hit Australia from missile fields in northeastern Europe and Siberia -- not sure how accurate that assessment is). Anyway, by "rocked pretty hard" I mean a few warheads set aside for non-petroleum targets of value (probably RAN/RAAF bases).

So the overall situation I see is less one where Indonesia ends up at war with Australia, and certainly no invasion, and more one where Australia's capabilities are seriously eroded and their northwestern frontier is a maritime free fire zone of Indonesian civil war factions, warlords, pirates, and refugees (lots and lots of those). I don't see Australian troops fighting to defend Australian soil, more fighting on below-shoestring-budget conditions to secure/stabilize key terrain/facilities/points in that morass and ensure freedom of navigation for the remnants of shipping. Half cordon-sanitaire and half-hold things worth holding, with the added stressor of the maritime LOCs mission. How well all that goes? Lots of room there for debate -- also lots of room there for gaming opportunity. The ultra-economy of force mission could yield lots of calls for 2000 era equivalents of the AATTV hooking up with some statelet or faction that Australia wants to support, as well as small unit commando-ing and raiding of point targets/smaller marauder and pirate groups/etc.

That discussion was on here a while back and I think the result was there is only a handful of viable targets - Newcastle/Sydney/Woolongong, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and perhaps Brisbane and Darwin. There really isn't anything else that warrants a nuke (even our national capital Canberra given that besides Politicians, there's nothing much there but sheep).

As for British/Australian troop differences in WWI, I recall just one of many incidents where a Section (9 men) of Australian Engineers assaulted and captured a German position that an entire British Battalion could not for days...
Speed, aggression and the willingness to get on with the job were the key to success in this instance (which was in an infantry training manual on tactics).
Note also the Australians were unsupported by fire or artillery at the time and captured over 30 prisoners.

This isn't to say the British didn't have similar examples amongst their ranks though.

Legbreaker, I have nothing but admiration for the ANZAC contribution in both world wars; in WW1 especially though, the two countries' overall losses would have been lower if they had had a few more filing clerks...

Perhaps so, but I can't imagine ANY Australian at the time being happy with a position in the rear.
Also, I don't believe the British leadership were all that interested in Australia (or any colony for that matter) providing their own support structures. Even the upper levels of command were held by British officers, at least in the earlier part of the war before strong demands were made for Australian leadership.