The coffins were covered with Union Jacks. A tremendous crowd followed the cortege. The members of several orders, including the Oddfellows, the Rechabites, and the Hibernians, marched in procession and acted as pall-bearers.
Clergymen of various denominations read the funeral services. There were scenes of great grief at the graveside, where several women swooned, and had to be carried away.
Many of the dead are related to each other by blood or marriage. Some 40 miners are unaccounted for, but authorities say there cannot be any more survivors.
The despatches forwarded to the Government of the Commonwealth by Rear-admiral Sir George Patey from the flagship of the Australian Navy relative to the operations, which have resulted in the capture of Herbertshohe, Simpson-hafen, and Rabaul in the Bismarck Archipelago, have been marked by a sailor's conciseness and directness.
We may assume, however, that an Australian Expeditionary Force, which was hurriedly organised within a few days after the declaration of war and despatched from Brisbane ostensibly for Thursday Island, was associated with the fleet in the successes that have been reported - not without the loss of several lives, which represent the first sacrifices made by a purely colonial force in the South Pacific on behalf of the Empire.
The three places that have been captured are all situated on the island which, formerly known as New Britain, became New Pomerania after the transference to Germany in 1885 of the group of islands that are now described as the Bismarck Archipelago.
Simpson-hafen is a fine harbour, and the Germans have been credited with the design of establishing a naval base at Rabaul. The wireless station, which has been captured by the Australians, is situated at a height of several hundred feet above the township of Rabaul, and is one of a chain of stations established by the Germans in their Pacific possessions.
Two of these stations - that at Apia and that in New Pomerania - have now fallen into British hands. Those that are left to the Germans - one on Nauru (or Pleasant) Island, close to the equator, almost due north from the New Hebrides, and the other, a very powerful station, much further west, on Yap, in the Caroline group - are erected on small more or less defenceless spots in the wide expanse of the Pacific, and their capture, or, in default of capture, their destruction should not be a matter of difficulty.
The loss to the Germans of the stations at Apia and Rabaul necessarily, however, impairs greatly the efficiency of the provision they had made for the transmission of communication to and from their squadron in the Pacific.
On Tuesday the Taranaki Herald reported that a local bore had flowed 25 barrels of oil in the preceding 24 hours. On Wednesday, when the staff commenced to withdraw the pump casing, there was further evidence that large quantities of oil had accumulated in the bore.
At 9.30 a.m. the staff had removed about 300ft of casing when the bore became very active and for about half-an-hour it was flowing pure oil to the full extent of the 8in casing. Eighty barrels of oil was saved in 40 minutes, and the locality round the bore showed that large quantities of oil had escaped.
- ODT, 15.9.1914.
