ABOVE: HMAS Gayundah leaves Brisbane in May 1912. Built at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1884, the Gayundah arrived in Brisbane in March 1885 as the first ship in the Queensland Navy. Displacing 367 tonnes, it was 37m long with a top speed of ten knots. It was equipped with one eight-inch and one six-inch gun and two five-barrelled Nordenfeldt machineguns. Picture: John Oxley Library 153639. BELOW: HMAS Brisbane fires off a missile in 2001. The Brisbane has now been decommissioned and will be scuttled to become a Sunshine Coast diving attraction.

By 1885, the Queensland Defence Force's land strength was 2599. In April that year, during one of the new state's periodic scares — "the Russians are coming!" — 50 volunteers from the Moreton Regiment joined a force sent to Fort Lytton to strengthen the fort and protect the river entrance. Fortunately, the Russians did not come.

In March 1891, the 1st Regiment was called out for a serious purpose much closer to home. Shearers were on strike in western Queensland and graziers were unhappy with lack of government action.

The government called in the army but getting a contingent of 66 troops from Brisbane to Barcaldine, far west of Rockhampton, was a logistical nightmare. The railway was incomplete so the troops got off where the line ran out at Yandina. They marched 14km in pouring rain to Cooran, where the line resumed, then sent a telegram to Gympie requesting a hot meal and clean socks.

At Gympie they were met by a jeering crowd who did not believe volunteer troops should be used to defend the interests of capitalist graziers. The troops were undeterred; an order to fix bayonets was given and, so records the history, the troops "advanced at the charge". The crowd dispersed.

From 1899, volunteers for the South African War left Queensland, not as part of their regiment but in other units such as the Queensland Mounted Infantry.

Today, the direct descendant of this unit, the 2nd/14th Queensland Mounted Infantry, is an armoured personnel carrier regiment of the Australian Army. It is a unit that neatly bookends the 20th century: in 1900, it was serving in South Africa, in 2000, it was serving in East Timor.

After Federation, the Moreton Regiment was incorporated into the Australian Army, where it became the 9th Australian Infantry Regiment, and later the 9th Battalion.

According to its history, "in 1911 an era came to a close, with the last parade of the regiment in the famous 'Red Coat' being held at the Exhibition Grounds." Today, the unit survives as a volunteer force, for re-enactments and parades.

The enthusiasm of the volunteers could not be faulted, although once the lads of the Kennedy Regiment went a little too far. Raised in Townsville in 1909, the regiment had a clear order: In the event of war, it was to sail to Thursday Island and bolster defences there (precisely the role carried out by the 49th Battalion in 1940).

World War I recruits rally to the cause.

So, when Britain went to war with Germany in August 1914, the regiment immediately set sail for the Torres Strait, intent on mixing it with the Kaiser's boys in German-controlled New Guinea. Fortunately perhaps, the official Australian expeditionary force from Sydney arrived in Port Moresby before they could make their mark on the battle.

Australian commander Col William Holmes was horrified to learn "a band of untrained and hopelessly ill-equipped volunteers" without orders were planning to take on the German empire. He ordered them back to Townsville.

The expeditionary force went on to take Rabaul from the Germans with very few casualties.

When the Australian Imperial Force was raised in 1914, the recruits were grouped in battalions and other units on a geographical basis. Queensland supplied all the troops for the 9th Battalion and half of the 12th.

This geographical recruiting made sense to the tidy military mind: In Britain, regiments had long recruited from discrete towns and counties. But it meant that when these units suffered heavy casualties, the impact in the small towns and villages of Australia and Britain was much greater.

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