Petty Officer William MilnePrint Page

The rest shelter commemorates Petty Officer William Milne of H.M.A.S. Perth and all naval men who died in service or were killed in action in World War Two.

In February 1942, H.M.A.S. Perth survived the Allied defeat at the Battle of the Java Sea, before being torpedoed and sunk at the Battle of Sunda Strait.  353 of the 681 aboard were killed, while all but 4 of the 328 survivors were captured as prisoners of war. 106 died in captivity, while 218 were repatriated after the war's end.

A Sydney woman's last tribute to a sailor who lost his life in World War II has been completed in the New South Wales town of Mittagong. The tribute, to her friend and to all naval men who died in the war, is in the form of a rest shelter which has been built in the Mittagong RSL Park on the route of the Sydney Canberra Remembrance Driveway. The money for the project was bequeathed to the Australian Commonwealth Naval Board by the late Mrs Myra Beatrice Wall, of Oatley, Sydney, who died in 1960. In her will she made a bequest of £500 for a memorial to her friend, Petty Officer William Milne, of HMAS Perth, and all naval men who died in World War II. The cost of the memorial was just over £700. The balance was contributed by the Remembrance Driveway Committee, which will maintain the shelter. Petty Officer Milne was taken prisoner by the Japanese when the Perth was sunk in Sunda Strait in 1942. He was killed in September, 1944, while being transferred from Burma to Japan in the Rakuyo Manu.  The Japanese ship was sunk by a United States submarine. 
Canberra Times (ACT), 28 July 1965.

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