The Aussie diggers of today's Australian Army draw on the inspiration of their predecessors. Australian soldiers have fought at the direction of their government in many places ranging from South Africa from 1899 to 1902 (during the Anglo-Boer War), to Gallipoli in 1915 and Beersheba in 1917 (during the First World War), to Tobruk in 1941 and Kokoda in 1942 (during the Second World War). After the world wars, Australian soldiers also fought at such places as Kapyong in Korea in 1951 and Long Tan in Vietnam in 1966. Increasingly, they also have drawn inspiration from the large number of lesser-known military operations conducted between the time when Gough Whitlam took office and John Howard lost office as Prime Minister of Australia. Yet there is little available to read that encapsulates this more recent experience. Those operations are the primary subject of this book.

In the aftermath of the politically contentious Vietnam War, Australian governments looked to be more circumspect in their use of armed force abroad. Rather than going ‘all the way’ with the United States, successive Australian governments thought more cautiously about the national interest and how a military force might contribute. These were years, therefore, of niche contributions to operations often far afield in support of allies and international organisations including the United States, the British Commonwealth and the United Nations. Such contributions were carefully calibrated to generate the desired effect without exposing Australia to the kind of social division experienced at the height of the Vietnam War. But to understand the Australian Army in the years from Whitlam to Howard, one must have a sense of how the use of Australian land forces evolved in the twentieth century.