Timor Leste – Canberra will on Monday begin withdrawing its last peacekeeping troops from Timor Leste, signaling the end of a six-year mission that heralded a controversial new era of regional intervention for Australia and one of its largest military ventures since the Vietnam War.

In a ceremony to be attended by Timorese leaders, Australia will hand over a base at Moleana, a tiny town near the border with Indonesia – the country whose violent backlash to Timor's independence prompted Australia's deployment.

Australia dispatched its military to Timor Leste in 1999 amid violent chaos that surrounded a UN-backed vote in favor of separating from Indonesia, which occupied the half-island former Portuguese colony in 1976.

More than 1,400 people were believed to have died and entire towns were razed as Indonesian troops and their local militia proxies rampaged until the arrival of peacekeepers led by up to 5,000 Australians.

However the deployment, a prelude to a new Australian foreign policy that has included military intervention in the Solomon Islands and a program to restore law and order in Papua New Guinea, led to a collapse in relations between Canberra and Jakarta that continues to resonate.

Monday's handover comes a month after the official end of the United Nations' military operations in Timor Leste, which had already been extended after two years of UN stewardship ceded to Timorese sovereignty in 2002.

Attending the ceremony will be Timor Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, the UN's special representative in the country, Sukehiro Hasegawa, and Australian army land commander Major Gen. Ken Gillespie.