'B' Company, 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment was added to this force on 23 May, with the soldiers being flown from Townsville to Norfolk Island and transferred by helicopter to Stalwart, Tobruk, Sydney and Success.

The guidance provided by the government was unclear, however, and retarded the development of an integrated ADF with the force structure needed to meet the Defence of Australia requirements.

[2][page needed] The ADF made few deployments in the years after 1972 due to the stable international situation and the focus on the defence of Australia.

[10] For the first week after the coup, the Australia's military response was limited to maintaining the naval vessels at or near Fiji and suspending aid to the RFMF provided under the Defence Cooperation Program.

In response, Land Headquarters directed that the ACG's readiness level not be changed to prevent rumours that the Australian Government was considering a military intervention.

An option to deploy Australian troops to open routes to airports and ports was included, however, due to concerns that civil unrest could block the movement of foreign nationals.

The COSC determined that an evacuation coordinated by the Australian embassy in Suva using chartered civil aircraft was the preferred option, and that the readiness of the ODF was not to be changed.

The reluctance to bring an infantry unit to a higher level of readiness was related to the political sensitivity of being seen to be preparing to intervene on the same day that Australian ships had been ordered to leave Fijian waters.

[18] By this time, Australia had received requests from seven countries, including the United States and Japan, to evacuate their citizens from Fiji if required.

[19] Despite taking this step, the Australian government believed that it was unlikely that law and order would break down in Fiji, with Foreign Minister Gareth Evans telling the media that he thought that there was a 20 percent chance of this occurring.

[20] At no stage was it considered possible that the ODF would be involved with fighting against the RFMF, and it was assumed that the Fijian military would want to help assist the evacuation of foreign nationals from the country.

The battalion's officers had been instructed to keep the potential deployment secret, and were not able to inform their men of it until 7 pm, one and a half hours after Townsville radio stations had broadcast the Prime Minister's announcement that the ACG had been ordered to stand by.

Once at Norfolk Island, the company group had to repack its equipment into smaller containers, as those originally used could not be carried by the Navy's Wessex helicopters.

Troop movements were conducted in dangerous high-wind conditions using the ships' embarked helicopters: three became unserviceable during the operation, while a fourth crashed onto Tobruk's deck.

Accordingly, the ADF force on the island began to be reduced, with Parramatta and the patrol boats Dubbo and Townsville (which had relieved sister ships Wollongong and Cessnock)[further explanation needed] departing for Australia that day.

[28] Within a year of Operation Morris Dance, the Army determined that a capability to move at least a company group from ship to shore in a single helicopter lift was needed.

In the mid-1990s, two Kanimbla-class landing platform amphibious were acquired as a result of the lessons learned from Operation Morris Dance, but each of these ships could only move a platoon per lift.