Features
First battle a landmark for nation
By Cpl Corinne Boer

Edition 1162, March 22, 2007
 
Battle honour: Brig Bruce Trimble and NSW Governor Marie Bashir, RNSWR Honorary Colonel, unveil a memorial at Circular Quay commemorating the embarkation of the NSW contingent to Sudan in 1885. Brig Trimble received permission to wear his great-grandfather’s medals for the occasion. His ancestor, Pte William Henley, had been awarded the Egypt Medal, the Suakin Medal and a Long Service Medal.
Photo by Bill Cunneen
THIRTY years before the Gallipoli landings brought international attention for Australia’s military, our armed forces took part in their first campaign on the other side of the world.

In 1885 NSW became the first self-governing colony in the British Empire to raise, equip and dispatch its own troops overseas to fight alongside England. The contingent was sent to Sudan to help quell an uprising led by Muhammed Ahmed, known to his followers as the Mahdi.

Suakin 1885 became the Australian Army’s first battle honour. Only the Royal New South Wales Regiment (RNSWR) bears this honour.

A memorial to the NSW contingent to Sudan was unveiled at East Circular Quay on March 3 – exactly 122 years since the contingent sailed from Circular Quay.

Personnel from RNSWR attended the ceremony.

Brig Bruce Trimble, RNSWR Regimental Colonel, was one of the people responsible for arranging the memorial, which he and NSW Governor Marie Bashir unveiled.

“The theme of the memorial was to honour the embarkation overseas of citizen infantry soldiers from Circular Quay beginning in 1885,” Brig Trimble said.

“It took some years of negotiation to obtain consent to construct the memorial at the position chosen.”



The NSW contingent comprised an infantry battalion of 522 men and 24 officers and an artillery battery of 212 men.

Brig Trimble said the troops sent to Sudan did not see a great deal of action and most casualties were from dysentery and typhoid fever.

“Among the reasons to justify the participation in Sudan was the importance of the Suez Canal to Australia, the effect on the Australian colonies if British forces suffered a major defeat, the number of British-born people in the Australian colonies at the time and thus their dual loyalty to the colony and the mother country, the activities of Germans and French in the Pacific Ocean in the 1880s, and the then Russian threat,” he said.