She carried both passengers and cargo and was principally used on routes between eastern Australia and islands in Melanesia and the Tasman Sea.

In November 1908 Jack and Charmian London travelled from Guadalcanal to Sydney on the Makambo after abandoning their ill-fated circumnavigation of the world on the Snark, a 45' sailing yawl.

[1] On 1 August 1921, the Makambo's captain sent, by radio, the first report that flotsam from the missing cargo steamer SS Canastota had washed ashore at Lord Howe Island.

[5] Problems with the rats led to an attempted ecological solution through the deliberate introduction of Tasmanian masked owls between 1922 and 1930 to the island, an action which compounded the disaster by adding another predator to the ecosystem.

[8] Rats are also implicated in the population declines and extinctions of Lord Howe's endemic lizards, land snails and beetles.