Recruiting committees popped up in communities across Australia but these officials had little to do at King Island.

Roughly a third of the population of King Island signed up, with 237 people leaving the island in the first two years of the conflict.

This represents the largest contribution of volunteers per capita in the entire Commonwealth, according to King Island Historical Society president Luke Agati.

“It far exceeded expectations,” Mr Agati said.

“Even though we had a recruiting committee we actually just didn’t need it. People just volunteered and that was the way it was.”

Mr Agati said patriotism was one of the main factors that led to King Island’s high recruitment rates.

“The British Empire and the King were top priority to all Australians,” he said.

“Even though we were federated and became a nation of our own ... people still felt they were connected to Britain in a strong way.”

King Island’s contribution wasn’t overlooked by those in the upper echelons of power.

The King expressed his gratitude in an illuminated address while Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes sent a commemorative plaque.

The women of King Island who sent creature comforts to the front and took over vacant jobs at home were also congratulated.

Privates Robert Hutton and Tom Johnson said the women were “worthy of the highest praise” during an event held on their return to King Island in October 1919.

Mr Agati said the contribution of women on the homefront remained “one of those very few pieces of history that was untold”.

“Women rallied around immediately and just started doing work that the men had done and left behind,” he said.

Captain Richard Henry Hooper was among those who enlisted after the outbreak of war.

He was one of many men that had emigrated to King Island in the early 20^th century to take jobs clearing trees and building roads in the newly-opened pastures on the island.

Captain Hooper served on the Western Front and was part of Dunsterforce, a secret Allied mission to protect interests in the Middle East.

He was injured when he was building an underground outpost and the earth collapsed on him.

This injury would prove problematic when Captain Hooper had the opportunity to meet the King to receive the Military Cross, his daughter Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Thain said.

“They wouldn’t let him take the walking stick in case he hit the king,” she said.

Mrs Thain remembers her father as a “strict but always fair” man who mentioned the war only when telling sporadic humourous anecdotes.

“I was born only six years after he got back so it must’ve been pretty awful for him to try and get over what he’d seen,” she said.

Captain Hooper would go on to be warden of King Island, help establish the first RSL and write a book, The King Island Story.

And when World War II broke out, he didn’t shy away from duty, and became head of the Voluntary Defence Force on King Island.