A forgotten chapter of Australia's First World War - beyond the battlefield, deep in the shadows of empire.
New Feller Master is a powerful cultural and microhistorical study of the Australians who captured, occupied, and governed German New Guinea between 1914 and 1921. Moving beyond traditional battle narratives, Michael Pigott explores how members of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (ANMEF) navigated colonial occupation without major combat, and how they adapted to life in the tropics - often shaped by racial hierarchies, imperial assumptions, and moral blind spots.
Drawing on rich primary sources and grounded in rigorous scholarship, the book uncovers looting, reprisals, and the controversial assault on Reverend William Cox - an incident that tested official responses to misconduct. Pigott reveals how these events and attitudes reflected broader colonial practices and left long shadows, both locally and in national memory.
While countless books examine the Western Front, few confront Australia's post-conflict presence in New Guinea. This long-overlooked episode has been largely neglected since two earlier full-length studies in 1927 and 1958. New Feller Master breaks that silence, tracing the ANMEF's legacy and the century-long failure to acknowledge this chapter in Australia's imperial history.
Across its chapters, the book weaves together vivid stories and thoughtful analysis, exploring who these soldiers were, how they felt about the occupation, and what their actions left behind. In the end, it comes down to the bigger picture, asking why this episode has been so overlooked and what it says about Australia's uneasy relationship with its colonial past.
Through powerful storytelling and sharp insight, New Feller Master brings this forgotten corner of history back into the light. It invites us to reckon with the past - to confront the silences, the myths, and the uncomfortable truths about Australia's first steps as a colonial occupier.
