Before I start I should say that Legbreaker is probably much better equipped than me to comment about Australia's WWII history. Also bear in mind that culturally, Australians and New Zealanders tend to celebrate the underdog (indeed, that's partly why we get so excited about events such as the Olympics, because on a per-capita basis we tend to do very well in the medal counts).
It's true that the best ANZAC forces were sent to Africa early in the war. Some were brought back to counter the rising threat of the Japanese but 2 big problems affected our ability to counter Japanese advances in the South Pacific. The first was that the bloody British gave up Singapore without a fight and we lost thousands of troops to Japanese prison camps (where they were used as slave labor and most of them were starved, worked and beaten to death) as a result.
Secondly, especially during much of the Kokoda Track campaign, most of the Australian troops involved against the Japanese in New Guinea were militia (what we now call the Army Reserve). Australia's Army Reserve forces these days are pretty good, especially for part timers, but back then they were sorely under-trained and under-equipped.
I think Wikipedia does a pretty good job of describing the Kokoda Track campaign in a nutshell:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokoda_Track_campaign.
We fought a series of delaying actions over the mountains of New Guinea against Japanese who were much better equipped and more experienced and we still fought them to a standstill. At the time all that stood between the Japanese completely controlling Papua and then probably beating the hell out of Australia's northern communities were afew battalions of militia. I can't begin to imagine what a bummer it must've been, slogging through tropical jungle and mud IN THE MOUNTAINS! Much of the fighting was virtually face-to-face. The engagement distances weren't much further than muzzle flash and bayonet tip.
Australian forces have a long history of doing more with less, much like our British counterparts. I'm actually kind of amazed that the Australian Army is still a highly effective force because, unlike during WWI and WWII when most Australians were tough-as-nails country boys who grew up shooting and riding and roaming the bush, most Aussies these days are soft, pudgy, weak urban dwellers.
Here's a quote from Wikipedia's entry on the First Battle of Kokoda:
"
Although the defenders were poorly trained, outnumbered and under-resourced, the resistance was such that, according to captured documents, the Japanese believed they had defeated a force more than 1,200 strong when, in fact, they were facing only 77 Australian troops."
That is an example of the "underdog" status that we Aussies tend to worship. The Gallipoli campaign and the Battle of Long Tan are other good examples. We don't necessarilly have to win a battle for it to be glorified in Australian history, we just have to "punch above our weight"
