NOTE - The Commando Association (Victoria) has disbanded and its activities and members are now being administrated by the Australian Commando Association Victoria

"Z" Special Unit

In March 1942, General Douglas MacArthur approved the establishment of an offshoot of the British Special Operation Executive (SOE) in Australia. This idea had been proposed by General Blamey. In London the new organisation was known as Special Operation Australia (SOA) but it was given a cover name in Australia, where it was known as Inter Allied Services Department (IASD), usually shortened to ISD.
Some SOE British Officers who had escaped to Australia from Singapore, formed the nucleus of ISD at its headquarters in Melbourne. In June 1942, the Australian service personnel in ISD were administered by a holding company known as "Z" Special Unit (later incorrectly as Z Force). This joint Allied Special Forces unit formed to operate behind Japanese lines in South-East Asia was predominantly Australian, but included specialist reconnaissance and sabotage groups of British, Dutch, New Zealand, Timorese and Indonesian military personnel using mostly American rather than British equipment.

In an attempt to distance the department from the ongoing conflicts between the Allied Intelligence Bureau and MacArthur’s HQ, the name Z Special was adopted for the operational arm of the Services Reconnaissance Department. Despite inadequate funding, resistance from elements within the Australian command and MacArthur’s interference, Z Special managed to survive, achieving modest but useful successes during its first year of operations.

"Z" Special Unit Commandos were trained at:
Fraser Commando School (FCS) located on Fraser Island off the Queensland coast near Maryborough
Cairns (Z-ES) (The "House on the Hill")
Richmond (PTU) - Parachute training unit
Camp Z, located at Cowan Creek, Refuge Bay (Broken Bay), north of Sydney
Camp Tabragalba (Camp "X") near Beaudesert
Careening Bay (CBC) near Garden Island in Western Australia, also called the Special Boat School.
Mount Martha Research Station Victoria ( MMRS)
Underground Methods School Qld (UMS)
Peak Hill - preliminary training for Timorese
Leyburn, Queensland (PTU) - parachute training unit transferred from Richmond in May 1945
School for Eastern Interpreters - Initially at Fraser Commando School, then Mount Martha, then Park Orchards, Melbourne

In September 1943, Z Special achieved what was probably its most notable success with Operation Jaywick when eleven commandos transported from Australia in a converted Japanese fishing boat, paddled canoes into Singapore harbor and sank seven Japanese freighters with limpet mines then escaped without a casualty. To many, Jaywick proved the special forces concept in the Pacific, but ironically it also served to increase the animosity towards them from conservative elements who still regarded Z Special as little more than publicity seeking extroverts. Their detractors pointed out that sinking enemy ships or blowing up oil storage depots might be great public relations exercises but contributed little to the war effort.

"M" Special Unit

M Special unit, was part of the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD), a joint Australian, New Zealand and British military intelligence reconnaissance unit, was formed in 1943, as a successor to the coastwatchers and unlike its counterpart, Z Special unit which was involved in a number of notable direct-action commando style raids, M Special unit's role was more clandestine focusing mainly upon gathering intelligence on Japanese shipping and troop movements by sending small teams behind enemy lines via infiltration by sea, air or land.

It operated primarily in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands between 1943–1945 and was disbanded at the end of the war.