Battle of the Coral Sea
The brigade's War Diary records that a week before the Battle of the Coral Sea of 4–7 May 1942, it was ordered on 29 April to move from Tomago near Newcastle to Greta in preparation for embarkation to Port Moresby, New Guinea. The Battle of the Coral Sea saw the Japanese suffer a heavy naval defeat, which forced them to refocus their efforts on securing Port Moresby by an overland attack across the Owen Stanley Range along the Kokoda Track from beachheads in the Buna–Gona–Sanananda area of north-east Papua New Guinea.