A Russian connection in the biography of the Governor Macquarie. In 1807 the future Governor of the Australian colonies Lachlan Macquarie undertook a trip across Russia...

Russian convicts in Australia. Amongst the convicts who breached the law in the realms of the British Crown were subjects of the Russian Empire…

Russian naval ships in Australia in the first half of the XIX century. Many Russian ships visited Australia between the foundation of the colony and the Crimean War. The first one was a sloop, Neva...

THE CRIMEAN WAR

Australia and the Crimean War. The Crimean War left its brightest impact not in the history but in the geography of Australia due to the "Crimean" names of towns, streets, mines, rivers and mountains. Nowadays trophies of this ended long ago war may be seen in many Australian cities...

Life of John Callaghan. A native of Ireland who later moved to Australia took part in several battles of the Crimean War and survived the Russian captivity...

BETWEEN TWO WARS

Russian naval ships in Australia between the Crimean and First World Wars. Russia and Great Britain - the mother country of Australia - were far from being allies then. However, the Russian seamen were always welcomed in Australia...

Some sides of activities of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay in Australia. Collection of information of a military and political character for the Russian Government was one of the sides of N.N. Mikluho-Maclay's activities in Australia and New Guinea...

THE FIRST WORLD WAR

In a blue and and far ocean the fates of the cruisers "Zhemchug", "Emden" and "Sydney" crossed...

The Gallipoli battle. In 1915 Great Britain and Russia attempted to capture the straights between the Mediterranean and Black seas and open the way for their ships to the Southern Russian seaports. The Australian army, in whose ranks more than 150 of Russian-born soldiers  fought at that time, received baptism of fire in this battle. A Russian cruiser "Askold" was amongst the ships of the Allied squadron which took part in the battle. Many Russian Jews also took part in this battle...

Raymond Ayres spent many months with Russian POWs in German captivity and became friends with many of them...

Mert Thomas and his Odyssey. In 1917 two Australians escaped from a German POW camp with a Russian comrade...

An Australian military nurse Francis MacDowell was amongst British women which were at the Russian-German front in 1916-1917...

The Military Intelligence did not leave the Russian subjects without attention during WWI

Russian names in the Roll of Honour of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra

THE CIVIL WAR IN RUSSIA

Australians in Russia during the Civil War (1918-1919)

Peregrinations of Tommy Taylor in the country of Bolsheviks. He was the only British subject who managed to have escaped from the German captivity through the revolutionary Russia...

Escape of Captain White. One of the first Australian pilots escaped from the Turkish captivity to Russia...

More than 100 Australians fought in the British Expeditionary Force in the Russian North. They fought courageously. Some died, some became heroes of this useless war. In archives there are
Memoirs of Sergeant John Kelly - a participant of the intervention
Diary of a machine gunman Wilfred Yeoman,
Memoirs of a private Ernest Heathcote,
Diary of Sergeant Perry
telling about battles against the Red Army troops...

With the White Russians in Siberia. Ernest Latchford - a captain of the Australian Army who served as a military advisor in the Kolchak's Army in 1918-1919 remembers...

In the Transcaspian region. C.H. Ellis - an officer of the Australian Army who served in the British Expeditionary Force in Transcaucasus and Turkmenistan in 1918-1919 remembers...

Australian in Transcaucasia.  In 1918-1919 several dozens of Australians took part in the dangenerous mission of General Dunsterville.  Captain of Australian Army Cecil Judge left memoirs about his service in the mission...

Raid of the "Swan" destroyer. Australian naval ships also came to the Russian shores. The "Swan" destroyer left a most interesting page in this story.  Her captain Arthur Bond wrote memoirs about his mission to Southern Russia.

BETWEEN WORLD WARS

Red Flag Riots. In 1919 a social disturbance which was later called Red Flag Riots occurred in Brisbane. Russian workers and Australians loyalists clashed then...

The famous Australian Polar explorer Hubert Wilkins in 1922 visited Russia with a secret mission from the USA Government... In 1937 he took part in the search for the missing Soviet aircraft led by Sigizmund Levanevskiy...

USSR in the early 1930s. An Australian writer Betty Roland lived and worked in USSR in 1933-34. She wrote a book some pages of which relate to military history...

THE SECOND WORLD WAR

A circumnavigation of the "Komet" raider. In 1940 Soviet icebreakers lead a German raider "Komet" along the Northern Sea Route. After that the raider began to hunt British and the Allied ships in the Australian and New Zealand waters and in the Pacific. An Australian sailor Vaughn Richards was one of her prisoners...

HMAS "Norman" was of of the first Allied ships to have visited the Russian North in 1941. Read the interview with one her crew George Ramsay...

RAAF in Russia. It is not widely known that a whole squadron of Australian pilots was in Russia in 1942. They landed in the Russian North on aircraft which were later handed over to the Soviet Air Force. In 1944 Australian pilots took part in an attack on a German battleship "Tirpitz"  from a Soviet air base Yagodnik...

POWs. During WW2 Soviet and Australian soldiers and officers were often next to each other in the German captivity. In 1945 some Australians were liberated from the German and Japanese POW camps by the Soviet Army...

The Great Escape. In March 1944 the Gestapo men executed 50 airmen of different nationalities who had tried to escape from captivity. There were 4 Australians amongst the killed. The revenge came with the victorious Soviet Army...

Allan Hammet was the only survivor out  of five crew members of a bomber shot down over Warsaw in 1944. He continued his war in a Polish partisan detachment and in early 1945 met the advancing troops of the Soviet Army...

Australians in the Arctic convoys. There was a handful of them. Read a interview with Laurie Downy and pages from his book...

British Free Corps - a unit in SS-Waffen troops was created by the Nazi authorities out of POW volunteers. There were several Australians amongst them. It was planned to send it to the Eastern Front to fight against the Soviet Army...

Russians in the Australian Army during WW2. There were several hunfreds of them...

Incredible adventure of the Russian airman Ivan Smirnoff in Australia. On 3 March 1942 a DC3 plane of the Dutch Air Force was attacked by the Japanese fighters and crush-landed on the coast of Western Australia. It was piloted by the Russian airman, ace fighter of WWI Ivan Smirnoff...

Stalin's Russia through Australian eyes. Australian diplomat J. A. Alexander wrote memoirs about his life in the Soviet Russia in 1944-47...   

Soviet espionage in Australia in 1940-1950s.  It is hard to believe but during WW2 the Soviet secret service searched for military secrets of the Allies in Australia and handed them over to the Japanese. Prominent Australians communists helped them in it...

Australian war correspondent Osmar White tells about his impressions of encounters with the Soviet soldiers and officers he came across in occupied Germany in 1945...

Australian writer and war correspondent Alan Moorehead tells about his impressions of the Soviet soldiers and officers he met in Iran in 1941...  In 1945 in Normandy he met Soviet people who fought against the Allies on the German side...

THE "COLD" WAR

Meteors vs MIGs. In the skies of Korea the Soviet and the Australian fighter pilots were on the opposite sides of the front line...
Read interview with Geoffrey Lushey who fought in the skies of Korea...

THE VIETNAM WAR

The Russian Australians in Vietnam. Interviews with the Vietnam war veterans  Alexander Ilin and Eugene Konashenko...

INTERESTING EXHIBITS IN THE AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL

There are many interesting exhibits in this museum which remind of Russia...

THE VETERANS OF THE WEST AUSTRALIAN ARCTIC CONVOYS ASSOCIATION TELL...

• Interview with the Chairman of the Assotiation Geoff Taylor...

• Interview with Ted Slinger

•  Interview with Ben Titheridge

• Interview with Dennis Craddock

• Interview with George Thomas

• Interview with John Hughes

• Interview with George Main