On March 3, 1925, as the last blue-bottomed rice flag was slowly lowered in Canada, the United Kingdom finally became history, Edward VIII announced his abdication, and the once prosperous empire of the sun never set irretrievably fell apart, and the Kingdom of Britain, the Republic of Ireland, Canada with the Emperor as the new head, the Commonwealth of Australia and New Zealand declared full independence......

Oceania, Australia.

It is the flattest and driest continent in the world, with the central depression and the western plateau being dry deserts, with only 260,000 square kilometers of land available for livestock and farming. Coastal areas, especially the southeastern coastal zone, are habitable and cultivated. It is hilly, rich in water, and fertile in the land. With the exception of the south coast, the entire coastal strip forms a "green belt" that surrounds the continent, and it is this "green belt" that feeds the country. Australia's inback is rich in mineral resources, and Australia's iron ore reserves are the second largest in the world.

As early as 40,000 years ago, indigenous people lived and multiplied on this ancient land. In 1606, the ships of the Spanish navigator Torres sailed through the strait between Australia and the island of New Guinea; In the same year, the Dutchman William. Janes's Duiggan had set foot in Australia and was the first recorded actual landing of outsiders in Australia. In 1770, the British navigator Captain Cook discovered the east coast of Australia, named it "New South Wales", and declared the land a British dependency.

In the beginning, the British simply used Australia as a place of exile.

On 18 January 1788,1 a fleet of 1,530 men led by Captain Philip arrived at Garden Bay, Australia, including 736 prisoners. Eight days later, on January 26, 1788, they officially established the first British colonial area in Port Jackson, Australia.

In 1790, the first freedmen from England emigrated to Australia, with Sydney as the center, gradually expanding inland, and by 1803, the colony had expanded to present-day Tasmania. In the early days, the colonies relied only on agriculture for their survival, and later took advantage of the natural conditions to develop animal husbandry. to 1819. Australia's livestock industry has developed considerably. Captain McCarcer and his wife together bred Australia's first snail horn sheep. The total number of sheep on their pasture is 6,000. The colonies were not only self-sufficient in wool, but also exported to Britain in exchange for daily necessities for Australia. By 1850, the sheep herding industry in Australia was already well developed, with a total of 18 million sheep in stock, and more than half of the total wool imported by Britain came from Australia. Sydney and Melbourne have replaced Hamburg, Germany, as the world's most famous wool distribution centres, with gold discoveries in New South Wales and Victoria in the nineteen-fifties. Gold diggers from Europe, the Americas and China flocked to the area. Australia's population surged from 400,000 in 1850 to 1.1 million in 1860. Since then, many important gold mines have been discovered. During the same period, a large number of mineral deposits were discovered, and these discoveries allowed Australia to get rich and develop quickly.

On 1 January 1961, the six colonial territories of Australia were united into the Commonwealth by referendum, and the Commonwealth of Australia was established.

On March 3, 1925, Australia declared its independence from the Commonwealth and became a fully independent federal state, with the Federal President as the Head of State and the Federal Prime Minister as the Head of Government. The first Federal President was elected by the respected William Brown. Morris. Hughes was born in London in 1864 and immigrated to Australia in 1884 as a Welshman who worked as a stonesmith, ranch ranger, seafarer, restaurant keeper, cattle trader, sheep shearer, actor, cargo checker, housekeeper and grocery store owner, president of the National Union of Dock Workers of Australia, a member of the Legislative Council, a member of the Federal Parliament of Australia, and a legal adviser to the British Crown.

He was Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia from 1915 to 1923. As the leader of the Labour Party and prime minister, he was deeply supported by the people.

At the time of independence, Australia had a population of about 6.5 million and a relatively developed economy. The gross national income has reached the level of European medium-sized countries, animal husbandry is the core and pillar of the national economy, the country has 110 million sheep, more than 10 million cattle, an annual output of nearly 400,000 tons of wool, beef, butter production is also in the forefront of the world, while the crop sowing area is increasing year by year, the annual wheat output of more than 2 million tons, mining is another pillar industry in Australia, of which the gold mining industry accounts for more than half of the total mining output value, with an annual output of more than 100 tons of gold. In addition, a large amount of silver, lead, copper, zinc, iron, and coal are mined and exported.

By 1926, the country's steel production was only 25,000 tons, and most of the steel was used to build railways rather than military industry and shipbuilding, and the federal army, navy, and air force had sent a total of 510,000 soldiers to Britain during the war, most of whom were killed in the war with the Allies, and less than one-fifth returned to Australia after the war and most of them were wounded, which made Australia fall into a long-term state of exhaustion after the war. At present, the total number of the three armed forces is less than 100,000, of which the army has more than 70,000 personnel in four divisions. Equipped with British-made weapons but lacking heavy artillery and armored vehicles, the navy had 1 heavy cruiser, 3 light cruisers, 6 destroyers, 3 submarines and more than 20,000 naval combat personnel at its peak in 1914, which was the first navy in the history of Oceania, but most of these naval forces were destroyed in the operation to support the British, so that by the end of the British Empire in 1925, there were only 2 old cruisers, 1 destroyer and 9 gunboats in the whole of Australia, and most of the 15,000 naval officers and men belonged to the maritime defense force; The Air Force has only one brigade of more than 60 combat planes and more than 100 pilots, and there are only more than 1,000 logistics personnel.

Between 1925 and 1927, although Australia's investment in defense increased after independence, it was still a thin skin and a lot of meat, and in March 1927, the hungry wolf finally arrived!

On 3 February, the Japanese government formally submitted a foreign communication letter to Australia, demanding that the Australian government take the Japanese emperor as its head of state and accept the "protection" of the Imperial Japanese Army, on the condition that it "pay tribute" to the emperor every year with 5 million sheep, 250,000 tons of wool, 100,000 tons of butter, 100,000 tons of cheese, 50 tons of gold, 2 million tons of iron ore, 5 million tons of coal mines, and 10,000 tons of various fish.

On the same day, New Zealand, a former Commonwealth country with an area of only 270,000 square kilometers, was also required to pay an annual "tribute" of 1 million sheep, 50,000 tons of butter, 50,000 tons of cheese, 5 tons of gold, 10,000 tons of fish, and 500,000 tons of iron and coal. – The governments of Australia and New Zealand immediately rejected this outrageous and unreasonable ultimatum.

On 11 February, the Japanese government delivered an ultimatum to both countries in an attempt to coerce the two small Oceania states into submission by war.

After urgently convening a meeting of parliamentarians and army generals, Australian President Hughes decided to refuse to accept the demands of the Japanese ultimatum, and a day later. New Zealand made the same decision – the so-called tribute of the Japanese was almost a disguised rule, and handing over most of the annual income meant poverty, backwardness and disaster.

On March 13, Japan declared war on Australia and New Zealand.

After responding to the Japanese Empire with a declaration of war, Australia and New Zealand successively announced a national mobilization, but wherever they could go to war, they should take up arms to defend the motherland, and the two countries also announced the formation of a military alliance to jointly resist the aggression of the Japanese Empire.

From mid-March, Japanese fleets departing from naval bases in Singapore and Tahiti attacked and blocked the sea transport lines of Australia and New Zealand. They also carried out artillery and air strikes on some coastal targets in the two countries.

On the second day after Japan declared war, the Matsudaira Brigade and the Nakai Cavalry Wing of the 21st Division stationed in Singapore were ready to board and set off, and they boarded the ship as the first Japanese troops to attack Australia on March 17, and then set off for Australia under the escort of the Japanese Third Fleet.

Although the Japanese military department looked down on Australia and New Zealand, which were composed of immigrants, after all, the two countries, especially Australia, had a vast territory, so after the Matsudaira Brigade and the Nakai Cavalry Wing had set out, the 6th Kumamoto Division, the 7th Sapporo Division, and some marines were transferred to form the Oceania Front, and these troops set off from the mainland at the end of March under the escort of naval ships.

Since the German-Japanese Singapore Secret Treaty is still in force. Germany announced on the 15th that it would sever all diplomatic relations with Australia and New Zealand and freeze their assets in their own countries. However, the merchant ships of the two countries stranded in Europe were not detained, and Chile and Mexico did not take any hostile measures against the two countries, and the merchant ships of the two countries were still able to carry out normal trade activities in the Americas.

At the behest of Germany. The Kingdom of Britain offered to extend a helping hand to Australia and New Zealand, and the envoy of King Robert I informed the two heads of state that the Kingdom of Britain was willing to provide weapons, ammunition and instructors free of charge to assist them in fighting the invaders.

Since the end of March, the Kingdom of Britain has begun to recruit and support "volunteers" in England, Scotland and Wales to fight in Australia and New Zealand, and within a week a total of 160,000 British citizens who have served in the British Empire** have been recruited, of which about 7,000 are naval combatants, and another 63 have obtained pilot qualifications for the British Imperial Air Force. The soldiers were soon assembled in Edinburgh and Liverpool. The weapons were supplied by the Scottish mercenary company in Germany, and the middle and senior officers were supplied by the British Royal Guard.

In addition, a number of decommissioned light ships and submarines from the German Navy were sold to Australia and New Zealand through the Kingdom of Britain, but when these weapons were delivered to the Australian and New Zealand armies, the two ** teams had to withstand the first wave of the Japanese offensive first.

Australia's long coastline is full of sandy beaches, and there are many suitable locations for landing operations, and the naval garrison guarding this coastline is seriously undermanned and equipped. On March 20, when 1,200 Japanese soldiers landed on a beach east of Wyndham, Australia, under the cover of the battleships Mutsu and the heavy cruiser Furutaka, an Australian company defending the area was routed by Japanese battleship fire. Over the next day, 7,200 soldiers from the remaining Matsudaira Brigade and more than 500 cavalry from the Nakai Cavalry Wing also successfully landed.

That night, the landed Japanese troops began to march towards Wyndham, which was guarded by less than 200 Australian militiamen, who had only 92 Lee Wagon in their hands. Enfield rifles, 36 revolvers and 40 shotguns, no machine guns, no cannons, and a great lack of ammunition, but these Australians had a brave heart.

Although the opponent did not deal with the cavalry's machine guns and sneaked into the city in the dark, they were dazed by the shotguns used by the Australians to repel wild dogs, and eight dying Japanese soldiers were left on the street leading to the center of the town, and the cavalry who had evacuated in a hurry also had some small iron pellets on them.

Immediately afterwards, the commander of the Matsudaira Brigade, Matsudaira Haruji, sent two infantry brigades to try to destroy the Australians' will to resist with numerical superiority, only to see more than 1,000 Japanese soldiers with bayonets and cats trotting forward, the Australian militia still did not confront the Japanese head-on, but hid in all corners of the town to shoot cold guns, and the Japanese soldiers who had received strict tactical training were embarrassed by such urban guerrilla warfare.

Unfortunately, the small city was too small for the Japanese to have too many soldiers, and after tossing and turning for most of the night, Wyndham's gunfire finally subsided, after the Australians had killed and wounded 61 enemy soldiers, but also annoyed the Japanese army, which thought they were invincible. At dawn, the men and women of the city, young and old, were herded by the Japanese soldiers into an open space in front of a church, where Japanese machine guns rang out......

On 22 February, President Hughes's old but determined voice was heard on the radio across Australia:

"Citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia, I have to tell you the bad news with grief and indignation, that just the day before yesterday, thousands of Japanese soldiers landed at Wyndham Beach in our southwest and captured the town of Wyndham that night! As a war, such a result is acceptable, but it is outrageous that the Japanese soldiers slaughtered 1,241 unarmed old people, women, children and militiamen who laid down their arms in just ten minutes, each of whom was an Australian citizen, and each of them raised their hands before dying! Such a cruel truth makes us see our opponents clearly, they are cold-blooded devils! We have no choice but to fight! Fight to the end! Long live Australia! Long live freedom! ”

Within a few days, large numbers of Australian troops, militia and civilians with weapons of all kinds quickly assembled on the southwestern beaches, trains filled with excited youth, middle-aged and even gray-haired old men, nearby ranchers on horseback with shotguns and hounds, and farmers and miners spontaneously formed a group to defend the country. By the time the Battle of Wyndham was launched on March 29, more than 150,000 Australian soldiers and civilians had gathered at the Japanese landing site, and the morale of this army was extremely high!

The battle lasted three days and three nights, during which time new forces constantly joined the side of the attackers, and although the Japanese had advanced weapons and the support of battleships, they finally retreated in front of the enraged Australians, in front of the Australians who looked at death as if they were home.

On April 2, all the Japanese soldiers who landed withdrew to the landing fleet, and the Australians won the first victory since the beginning of the war with great sacrifices, and countless people shouted to the world with their blood and lives: We are not weak, don't try to pinch us as soft persimmons!