As a quiet colonial outpost, deeply wedded to Britain and hopelessly isolated, early 1900s Australia is not often remembered for its strategic ambition overseas.

But when it comes to international spy operations and intelligence gathering, it served as a savvy operator.

"Australia spied on Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, the United States and China, all before the advent of World War One," says former intelligence officer and author John Fahey.

From the colonial Pacific to war-time Tokyo, here are three fair dinkum spooks that led Australia into the world of undercover intelligence.

Sent to spy on the French: Wilson Le Couteur

In the early 20th century, the region surrounding Australia was rife with European colonial powers vying for territory.

Of particular concern to Australia, Fahey says, was the British Empire's most prolific adversary, France.

Its influence was seeping into the New Hebrides, the scattered archipelago that became Vanuatu.

Wilson Le Couteur was sent to spy on the French in the British New Hebrides. ( Flickr: Gerard )

Enter Wilson Le Couteur, a Jersey-born French interpreter with impressive networks. He wrote to Australia's first prime minister, Edmund Barton, offering his services as an agent, and was sent on a secret mission to the New Hebrides.

The prime ministerial secretary of 1901 gave secret instructions to "report for the information of the Government of the Commonwealth".

"You will take all possible care that the object of your visit is not made public in any way."

Le Couteur was disguised as a temporary employee of a shipping company in need of copra, used in the creation of coconut oil.

"The launching of Le Couteur to spy on Britain and France in the New Hebrides was more than a rejection of British oversight," Fahey says.

"It was an emphatic exercise of sovereign power by a nation protecting its own interests first."

Upon his return, Le Couteur reported that the French were set to overwhelm their British counterparts through the gradual acquisition of land.

With perhaps a hint of bias, he observed a society that was "averse to the French administration", including the indigenous population who were "praying to the Queen for annexation".

According to Fahey, the Australian government, hungry for the island to fall under the control of the British Empire, released the report anonymously to the press.

The first published instalment was unambiguously titled The Story of French Aggression.

Australia was never gifted an entirely British New Hebrides, but in 1906 a 'condominium' arrangement was signed with France, granting joint control of the islands.

From pearler to secret agent: Reginald Hockings

Reginald Hockings was a pearler before he entered the world of undercover intelligence. ( Supplied: Australian National Maritime Museum )

For many, World War I evokes images of the deathly trenches of the Western Front, but the arms of Germany's war campaign reached far beyond Europe.

German agents in the US were buying up arms and supplying them to nationalist leaders in India via the neutral Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia.

Fahey says the Australian Commonwealth Naval Board (ACNB), confronted with a German wartime presence closer to home, set about countering Germany with an agent of its own.

Their man was Reginald Hockings, from Brisbane, who had founded the Wanetta Pearling Company.

The job provided him with both wealth and international connections — particularly within the Netherlands' colonial administration.

Hockings became, Fahey says, "a man whose background and knowledge made him eminently suitable for the role of intelligence officer operating in the Netherlands East Indies".

Hockings' secret weapons were a sophisticated radio network, and a crew of multi-lingual luggers that included Malay and Indonesian seafarers.

The ACNB tasked him with travelling throughout the archipelago, tracking people suspected of involvement in the secret German weapons trade.

"It was an entire espionage organisation and it fell right into the lap of the Australian Naval Board, just as the need for such an outfit became critical," Fahey says.

"The organisation expended considerable efforts in the dangerous work of developing sources among local police and officials, and the domestic servants of senior Dutch officials."

Reg Hocking's radio equipped pearler, the Wanetta, became a secret weapon in his intelligence gathering in the Netherlands East Indies. ( Supplied: University of Queensland Library )

The German operation was eventually foiled, Fahey says, but not before Hockings' men uncovered August Diehn, a German intelligence operative.

In a treacherous manhunt, Diehn was found in the wilderness of Bali, looking to buy an oil mill.

After the war, Hockings fought for his two assistants, Batcho Mingo and Tommy Loban, to be granted permanent residency in Australia.

Both were given "Alien Registration Certificates" which, under the pressures of the white Australia policy, was "something of a feat", Fahey says.

"These men and the nameless others who manned and sailed the Wanetta are part of Australia's intelligence history."

The translator who likely met a grisly end: Harry Freame

The Japanese born Harry Freame worked as a sailor and a soldier before he became a spy. ( Supplied: Goodyear family collection )

By 1939 Japan's southward expansion began to pose a threat to Australia far more existential than a weapons trade.

Harry Freame, an enthusiastic recruit to Australia's World War I effort, had served as a scout at Gallipoli before being wounded in a Turkish attack.

Born in the Japanese city of Osaka to an English sailor and the daughter of a local samurai, he could speak fluent Japanese.

His linguistic talents were peculiar and in very high demand.

"Harry Freame was a rare commodity in 1939 ... it is no surprise that military intelligence snapped him up," Fahey says.

But the decision to send him undercover to Tokyo, at a time when the Japanese military police, the Kempeitai, were enforcing a ruthless regime, would prove a grave mistake.

The brutal Japanese military police, the Kempeitai, were notorious for cracking down on foreign intelligence. ( Wikipedia Commons: Mainichi Newspapers Company )

Freame was not in Japan for long, and was doing little more than translation work before the Kempeitai decided to act against him.

Fahey says the manner of his death is unconfirmed, but "the claims of the Freame family that Harry was attacked and garrotted on a Tokyo street in January 1941 are most likely true".

He says a probable cover-up ensued, in which Australian doctors issued the official cause of death as complications related to cancer of the gall bladder, a finding at odds with Freame's medical record.

Fahey says Freame was most likely the first Australian clandestine intelligence operative to be killed while serving his country.

"If so, it is wrong that he should be lying in an unmarked grave in Sydney, unacknowledged and unwanted by his country," he says.

"Still, this is the fate of many a good spy."