Seven months before Australian troops landed at Gallipoli, a sailor from the Melbourne suburb of Northcote became the nation's first casualty of World War 1. Able seaman William 'Billy' Williams was shot in the stomach and mortally wounded en route to capture a German wireless station at Bita Paka, near Rabaul. The date was September 11, 1914.

      Only ten days later, and with no further fighting, all of German New Guinea was formally surrendered to Australia. What history books have until now dismissed as 'a skirmish' led to a huge expansion of Australia's interests to the islands in the north.

       Heroes before Gallipoli looks at the events before and after this expansion and the forces that shaped those events and decisions.