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Sailing from Bali-Witu to Rabaul
We sail on from Bali-Witu to Rabaul, capital of New Britain Island in Papua New Guinea. We had spent a month at Bali with Hermann and Barbara, exploring the island and taking them on several weekend trips by yacht around the area. When the Christmas break came along they decided to come with us on the yacht to Rabaul, the major capital of the area. We stopped at Ulamona along the way, a Catholic mission enterprise that was heavily into extracting timber for profit. While there we tripped up to the most recent lava trail from the active volcano Mount Ulawun which erupts regularly every few years. A conic mountain that rises from sea level up over 7600 feet and is taller than Mt Kosciuszko, Australia's highest mainland mountain. Then we continued to Rabaul, partied with Hermann's friends, said goodbye to Hermann and Barbara who flew back to Unea, and explored the area. While there we received a message from Dickie Doyle the manager of Langu Plantation back on Garove Island. He wanted me to fit a new motor into his yacht, and being the typical cruising yacht people travelling on limited funds, we jumped at the opportunity of earning more money. In the next video we return to Garove to do the work and some extra building work Dick found for me. In 1942 Rabaul was initially taken by a 5,000 strong Japanese force against a small Australian defence. They built Rabaul up to a 100,000 strong force and large air base for advancing through the Solomon Islands and to Australia. However with Australian victories on mainland PNG, the US were able to establish forward airfield bases and eventually do continuous bombing of the heavily fortified Japanese and eventually isolate Rabaul from essential supplies which disabled the large Japanese forces there until the war end. Remember that any video sections are digitised from 50 year old super 8 film. Photos are digitised from 50 year old 35mm slides.