Monday 22nd
August 2016
The sky is getting dark and we might have thunder,
and, with a bit of luck, lots of heavy rain.
It has been extremely hot, still, sunny for the past few days. I swim as much as possible to cool down but…it
isn’t possible to stay submerged 100% of the time, which is what it would take
to remain properly cool.
East New Britain is a place of extreme beauty. Lush and green, mountainous, with an impressive
array of volcanoes,
one of which blew up very violently in 1994 and
decimated the once-pretty town of Rabaul, said by many to be the very nicest town
in all of PNG. Nobody died. They had enough warning to evacuate everyone
to Kokopo, across the bay, where we are now.
Apparently the government funded new housing in Kokopo but a large number
of people silently slipped back to their beloved Rabaul.
So apart from the botany and the geology, there is a lot
of history here. Pete and I are very
ignorant, we have discovered. For example,
we did not know that we had submarines in 1914, or that Australia fought
Germany here in World War I. We did know
a bit about the fight against the Japanese in World War II but had no idea of the
extent of the occupation here.
The island is riddled with tunnels, some of them 90
metres long, with extensive passageways, rooms, stairs.
The Japanese apparently prepared the tunnels some three
years before the invasion. I can’t fathom
how anyone could ever think it was a good idea to go to someone else’s steamy,
hot island to terrorise the local population, force them to dig a maze of
tunnels in which to hide out,, emerging only to rush around in the jungle
killing people. CRAZY!!
The tunnels were dug mostly by Indian prisoners of
war, most of whom died. I think they started
out with 18,000 and ended up with only 2,000 surviving.
Our first stop was at the Bitapaka cemetery. I had misheard the name and thought we were
going to the Peter Parker cemetery, so I bored Pete quite a lot by telling him
that Peter Parker is Spiderman’s real name.
Unnecessary information…he isn’t really into superheroes at all, and it
was Bitapaka not Peter Parker all along.
It is a very beautiful cemetery, with glorious trees shading
a smooth green native lawn. All maintained
by the Australian government. I have
been to many war cemeteries and must admit…I don’t love them. Heart-wrenching sad, all these dead young
men. Pete wandered around happily looking at
gravestones while I sat in a shady pavilion and read the visitor book. Only one person wrote anything which echoed
my feelings…War, what is it good
for? Absolutely nothing! (Thank you German visitor, and Pink
Flloyd.)
Pete had done a tour with Peter Frappell, so he knew where
to go and what to look at. I got a very
good abridged version. We drove up a
little track to the Japanese hospital tunnel, and were soon in the charge of
our new friend, Noah, whose wife is the traditional owner of this land.
He took us first to the barge tunnel, owned by a large
man called Doyle, who boomed out some facts and figures for us. Quite amazing…This tunnel went back 90 metres
into the hillside and has the remains of five large barges in it. 300 metres from the sea! The Japanese had designed an elaborate series
of gantries, floating jetties, railway lines, to get the barges out of the
water and hidden in the hills. Amazing!!
And oh those poor prisoners of war, and local
village people, forced to labour long and hard.
Also…it can’t have been much fun for the Japanese soldiers, either,
hiding in the tunnels, popping out into the jungle to kill or be killed…
As we walked through the jungle from one lot of
tunnels to another, we heard banging, crashing, shouting, yahooing…Some young chaps
having a party, and NOT going to church, unlike just about everyone else on the
island. Noah trudged along, and said,
laconically, “They are pissed.” Indeed
they were! As we walked back the crashing
got louder and he sighed. “They are
destroying their mother’s house.”
After our tour of the tunnels, he said that sometimes the
local boys come and sleep in there. It is
cool, and comfortable if you don’t mind sleeping on gritty sandy stone. And in fact…one of the drunken young vandals would
surely be in need of a place to stay, having destroyed his mother’s hut… It turned
out he was…one of Noah’s very own bubus…(Bubus = grandchildren…)
We had sandwiches on a grassy knoll on one of the smaller
volcanoes overlooking Rabaul.
All very picturesque.
After this food and photo opp, we went over to the other
side of town, right up to the base of the newly-erupted volcano. Small but lethal!
There is a small
hot spring stream at the base. Two los
of guardians are waiting to collect an entry fees. First you have to pay to go through a gate;
next you have to pay to walk across to the spring. They are deadly rivals, these entry guards. Both groups claim to be the rightful owners
of the land. And they probably are…it’s just
that the hapless visitor had to go through one lot of rightfully owned land to
get to the next lot.
Never mind; it was
worth paying twice. This not the sort of
hot spring you might like to wallow in…the water is 100 degrees and will cook
you quicker than you might like to think…
People zip from
one island to another in speedy little banana boats. No shade, no lifejackets…we counted 22 people
disembarking from one of them yesterday!
They all look remarkably happy after tossing around on the swell, with
small children and baskets of food wedged between their feet.
Pete spent the whole
day today getting fuel, with David and Christopher from the resort team. It took the three of them about six hours, lugging
the jerrycans in the dinghy, up to the ute, into town to the petrol station,
back again…Their reward was…a bit of money, a silver ring from our dwindling ring
collection, and three photos each of themselves with Pete, now known as
BossMan!
Tomorrow morning
we are going out on the dive boat to swim with dolphins. Gavin says there are usually between 200-300
just around the point, quite happy for people to swim amongst them. WEEHEE!
What spectacular photos!
ReplyDelete