A telephone call on November 25, 1941 still echoes in Baston family legend.

Neil Baston’s father Keith, then a young merino sheep farmer at Quobba Station almost 1,000 kilometres north of Perth, had heard Hudson search planes roaring overhead, as World War II raged on.

The commotion was unusual for the wild and windswept coast he called home. 

The nearest town, Carnarvon, had just 300 residents and visitors were rare.

“Lieutenant Cook of the RAAF [the Royal Australian Air Force] would have rung dad and said, ‘There’s people on the beach up there,'” Neil recounts.

A deadly WWII battle

Six days earlier, a German raider known as the HSK Kormoran was stalking the port at Carnarvon with plans to lay mines and cripple Allied trade routes.

According to survivors, the decorated Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney appeared over the horizon and gave chase.

Pulling almost alongside the Kormoran, which was flying a Dutch merchant flag, HMAS Sydney ordered it to give a secret signal.

Unable to respond, the German gunship hoisted its true colours and opened fire.

None of the 645 seamen aboard HMAS Sydney survived.

The Kormoran was also damaged in the battle and, with its engines ablaze, lifeboats were launched.

Of the 380 German crew, 318 escaped with their lives.

Lifeboats on the beach

While several of the lifeboats were apprehended by Australian authorities at sea, two managed to reach the coast.

The first carried 46 survivors, landing at a beach on Quobba Station near 17 Mile Well on November 24. 

“It was a few days after the battle, so you can imagine they would have been a bit shocked and [had] injuries, a bit of exposure,” explained Ross Anderson, a curator at the WA Shipwrecks Museum.

“Luckily at 17 Mile Well, they found a rainwater tank because it was a station and they butchered a sheep.”

A day later, in Neil Baston’s telling, news reached Quobba Station’s homestead, with the RAAF warning his father of a mysterious lifeboat spotted by plane.

On the same morning, station worker Ahmat Doo is said to have come across dozens of the shipwrecked seamen while doing a routine check of the station’s water supplies. 

Neil said the stockman “must have been on Phar Lap” because of the speed at which he raced home.

Ahmat returned with Keith, and the pair soon realised the men barely spoke a word of English.

Keith realised the group was German and informed them they were now prisoners of war.

Secrets left in sand and sea

Archived police and military material confirm Keith Baston played a role in arresting the Kormoran survivors.

Records show a local police sergeant, a doctor, and RAAF Flight Lieutenant Harold Cook met with him that day, leading a search party in trucks borrowed from the well-known Gascoyne Trading Company.

They received word of another 57 survivors who had landed at Red Bluff, 50km to the north, and found the men sheltering in caves. 

Today, rumours of buried artefacts still swirl around the coastal site.

“When the army came over, at least one weapon was thrown in the water, so they wouldn’t be arrested as an armed landing party,” Ross Anderson said.

“Geraldton resident Tom Goddard, a young surfer back in 2007, he actually found the remains of a gun under water … when he was looking for fishing lures off Red Bluff.”

The remains of the WWII-era pistol are now on display at the Museum of Geraldton.

The Bastons retain their own heirloom — a pair of binoculars emblazoned with the swastika of the German Nazi Party — which was recovered by Keith during the remarkable episode.

“It [the pair of binoculars] was under a rock ledge, leading from the beach at the Red Bluff up to the top of the cliff,” Neil said.

One of the most sought-after relics remains to be found.

Of the seven Kormoran officers who came ashore at Red Bluff, Fritz List was the ship’s propaganda officer and Nazi Party representative.

Dr List told interrogators about a film camera he buried in the sand that contained images of the HMAS Sydney’s final moments.

Despite years of searching Red Bluff with other keen researchers, Keith never located the camera.

“They had arranged for a dozer next time it passed through to dig in that particular spot where they thought it was,” Neil said.

“In the meantime, my father died in ’68, so that was the end of that.”

A chance meeting

By November 26, 103 Kormoran survivors were rounded up from Quobba Station and imprisoned in the Carnarvon jail.

Many were then taken to Perth or Melbourne as prisoners of war.

Without any Australian survivors, controversy and speculation long shrouded HMAS Sydney as some refused to accept German accounts of the day.

The wrecks of both ships were found in 2008 and an inquiry the following year ruled the available evidence matched survivor testimony that an error by the captain of HMAS Sydney led to its sinking.

He closed into point blank range without ordering his men to action stations, leaving the Australian vessel devastatingly vulnerable.

But that fateful morning in 1941 was not the last time a Baston crossed paths with the affair. 

In 2001, Kormoran gun loader Fritz Engelmann travelled to WA to mark the battle’s 60th anniversary.

During a visit to Perth, he walked into a school classroom to share his story, only to find Will Baston, the 16-year-old grandson of Keith, who had arrested him on a remote beach all those years before.

“He was quite surprised to be meeting a descendant of a man he had met in order of [60] years earlier,” Will said.

“The conversation was, as you can imagine, quite surprising for both of us and we were just very grateful for having met each other in that moment.”