SECRET.
64-R
QUEENSLAND.
Page 160
QUEENSLAND.
No. 24248.
Defence Scheme revised to September 1892.
Remarks by Colonial Defence Committee.
THE Colonial Defence Committee have had before them the Defence Scheme of Queensland as revised to September 1892.
1. The Scheme mainly deals with the general mobilization of the forces of the Colony at large, and gives the particulars of the mode of transport to be employed, and the time required to complete any necessary movement of troops from their peace station to their fighting destination. It also lays down what coast towns are to be defended, and gives an outline of the method of defence to be adopted in each case. All this is satisfactorily dealt with, and comprises the necessary points to be considered in a General Head-quarters Scheme of a Colony which is really a great State of the Empire. At the completion of this mobilization the disposition of the forces will be as follows, viz. concentrated at Brisbane, 3,188 all ranks, including a mobile field force of 2,060; at Townsville, 631, including a field force of about 500; while at the other coast towns of Bundaberg, Maryborough, Rockhampton, Mackay, Bowen, Cairns, and Cooktown are the local forces at or belonging to the vicinity of each, which do not move in the first instance, with the exception of one garrison battery from Cairns to Thursday Island and one garrison battery from Bowen to Townsville. It is presumed that the orders necessary for carrying out this mobilization will be kept drafted and ready for issue at head- quarters, and a statement to this effect should be made in the Scheme.
2. It is desirable, however, that the special measures connected with the defence of each port or coast town should be dealt with in greater detail. From the nature of the attack to which the Colony is most exposed, viz., raids by a small force of cruizers or by a single cruizer, any attack, if undertaken at all, would be most probably attempted as a surprise and at the outset of a war, and it is therefore especially necessary that any measures which may have to be taken at short notice should be worked out in the fullest detail, and that each officer to be intrusted in war time with responsibility should be previously acquainted with, and have ready to his hand a record of, the action to be taken by him on emergency. For this purpose it is suggested that each port, or perhaps a better grouping would be each of the three military districts, should have a Scheme supplementary to the more general Scheme for the Colony, entering into the minuter details connected with the local distribution of the troops allotted to it under the general Scheme, their supply and transport, medical and hospital arrangements, &c., and containing all necessary instructions and orders for the Commanders, copies of which should be in their hands, so that they may be fully acquainted in peace time with the duties which would devolve on them in war. These details, as far as they can be foreseen, should be worked out beforehand, and as it would be unwise to encumber the more general or mobilization Scheme with them, the most convenient and clear arrangement in which to record them would be as separate Schemes in Annexes to the general Scheme. Each such Annex should be arranged in
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