Consisting of an infantry battalion, an artillery battery, and a small field ambulance detachment, it departed from Sydney on 3 March 1885.

During the early years of the 1880s, an Egyptian regime in the Sudan, backed by the British, came under threat from rebellion under the leadership of native Muhammad Ahmad (or Ahmed), known as Mahdi to his followers.

In 1883, as part of the Mahdist War, the Egyptians sent an army to deal with the revolt, but they were defeated and faced a difficult campaign of extracting their forces.

The British instructed the Egyptians to abandon the Sudan, and sent General Charles Gordon to co-ordinate the evacuation, but he was killed on 26 January 1885 during the fall of Khartoum.

When news of his death arrived in New South Wales in February 1885, the government offered to send forces and meet the contingent's expenses.

[5] A large crowd of more than 200,000 people saw them off, while the dispatch of the contingent was portrayed in a number of contemporary newspapers as the "coming of age" of the Australian colonies.