Australia Station Honour Roll Print Page

The marble tablet in the church commemorates those men who died in service while serving on the Australia Station and who are buried in St Thomas` cemetery. 

The Australia Station was the British, and later Australian, naval command responsible for the waters around the Australian continent.

In 1848, an Australian Division of the East Indies Station was established. However in 1859 the British Admiralty established an independent command, the Australia Station, under the command of a commodore who was assigned as Commander-in-Chief, Australia Station. This decision was partially in recognition of the fact that a large part of the East Indies Station had been detached to Australian waters, while also reflecting growing concern for the strategic situation in the western Pacific in general, and in Tahiti and New Zealand in particular.

At its establishment, the Australia Station encompassed Australia and New Zealand, with its eastern boundary including Samoa and Tonga, its western edge in the Indian Ocean, south of India and its southern edge defined by the Antarctic Circle.  At its largest, the Australia Station reached from the Equator to the Antarctic in its greatest north-south axis, and covered one quarter of the Southern Hemisphere in its extreme east-west dimension, including Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Melanesia and Polynesia.

In 1913, the Australian Squadron was disbanded, and responsibility for the Station was handed over to the new Royal Australian Navy.

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