20130314 from SOLOMON ISLANDS TO RABAUL, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Thursday March 14, 2013 at sea on the way from SOLOMON ISLANDS to RABAUL, Papua New Guinea

We love days at sea but certainly this wasn't to be a relaxing day on the ORION it turned out to be very busy with wonderful lectures and presentations by the Expedition Leader Mick Fogg, the Guest Lecturer David Silverberg and Justin Friend, the destination Manager from Orion Head Office who we are lucky enough to have on board with us. We woke to mostly blue skies and large rolling seas, so we thoroughly enjoyed our latte up in the Galaxy Lounge at the very front of the Orion on deck 6 - looking ahead to where our day would take us today. We were the only folks enjoying coffee inside this morning and enjoyed the quiet time to relax and look around.

Rabaul was established in 1896 with the arrival of Albert Hahl who was Governor from 1901 -1914 when it (known as German New Guinea) was taken by the Australians at the start of WWI because of the shipping menace (close proximity to St George's Channel) to Australia and New Zealand. After the war, the territory of New Britain and Rabaul became part of Australia as a mandated Territory. The Japanese were not happy about this system of mandates since Japan had been an ally of Britain and USA during WWI. Later, during WWII the Japanese had 96,000 troops stationed on Papua New Guinea! Yes, this part of the world has a huge history that many of us now know a little about.

After breakfast outdoors in the Delphinus Cafe (it was very warm already) we headed upstairs to the COSMOS theatre and enjoyed a lecture by David, all about statistics in Melanesia showing facts and figures about the health & welfare versus Gross Domestic product of the populations of Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. In almost every case, Melanesia is not being very successful in meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals of improving life in 7 categories in these countries, with Papua New Guinea inevitably being at the bottom of the pile and Fiji at the top for progress and improvements. (download gapminder software and data for these facts and figures). David continued talking about the types of volcanoes that there are around the world and specifically as it relates to Rabaul and Papua New Guinea.

There was a scheduled routine crew drill to prepare and train for an emergency on board (we hope that there are none!), then we were back into the COSMOS theatre to listen to Mick Fogg teach us all about Rabaul and the many earthquakes and volcanic eruptions "In Vulcan's Shadow". The last eruption in Rabaul on Mt Vulcan was less than 2 months ago on January 22, 2013 but that was not as big as many in their past, especially Sept 1994 when the city was destroyed! Many times parts of Rabaul have disappeared underwater temporarily, then raised above sea level, and also the city being completely covered in ash. The local language is called Tolai - and there is an old Tolai saying " once in your lifetime you will experience a volcanic eruption" (Tikana pakana takaum kilala na niluan - una gire ra kaia na vuvuai). Mick's lecture was fascinating and especially his photos. Back in 2009 Mick has footage from when they climbed to the top of the volcano and it was throwing out huge clouds of smoke and ash, and 15 minutes after they were standing taking photos, that spot had completely disappeared as the eruption suddenly consumed it.
In September 1994 there was a huge eruption and 30,000 people were evacuated from Rabaul but since the eruption had been expected only 4 or 5 people died. Rabaul is built on this extremely active caldera from the first major eruption in 54AD, known by scientists to be the 2nd or 3rd biggest volcanic eruption ever anywhere in the world. What doesn't make sense today is why Rabaul is still in existence and why people are still living there! Mick explained this as being due to this being no man's land so essentially it is squatters who are living there today although the government is no longer handling infrastructure in Rabaul in its' efforts to move people away from this very dangerous area.

Lunch was outdoors at Delphinus and was a BBQ of sausage, beef burgers, ribs and steak with all the salads and fixings. They also had wonderful large shrimp which Terry enjoyed followed by ice cream and several cakes and tarts. Justin presented a wonderful slide show of his marriage to a lady from Papua New Guinea back in 1999 and the complicated traditions he had to follow to make this happen! We howled with laughter at the ups and downs of the processes and the many difficulties he faced along the way. We hope he does this again when Joan joins us in Rabaul - Justin is simply so educational and entertaining to listen to.

Following Justin was the raffle for the Solomon Islands map which has been artfully illustrated by one of the crew - what amazing artwork he drew on the map! Unfortunately we weren't the lucky winner but it was fun to hope that we might be for awhile! The crew handle this raffle and use the funds for the crew Welfare Fund. They also run a Bingo game afterwards with prizes for the first and second place winners, with proceeds going to the Crew Welfare fund. Tonight they will do their crew show after dinner, and if it's anywhere near as good as what we saw on Orion II in Borneo last year it will be excellent and a lot of fun!

Back in our cabin, we watched "First Contact The Highlands Trilogy" with original footage from 1937 about when Australian brothers Michael, Daniel and James Leahy went into PNG to look for gold. In 1930 1 million people lived in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, their existence unknown to the outside world. When the brothers went into the Highlands, the indigenous natives and the Aussies talked in sign language to each other - recounting many years later, some of the PNG indigenous eye witnesses said "we thought we were the only people in the world and we thought that our spirits returned as white men. We thought they carried their wives in their backpacks and that they had huge penises around their waists under their lap laps (trousers)". The natives had no concept of human life beyond their valleys. Leahy, an old man when the movie was released more than 20 years ago, says "they did think we were more than ordinary human beings" especially when they took in axes and food and told the natives that the big bird would be coming - this would be the plane that they had arranged to come and pick them up. This scared all the natives who ran away and hid in the bushes when the plan came in. The locals worked for the Leahy brothers and gave their daughters and wives to them and their crew, in order to be given shells and such which were considered to be money to the locals at that time. When the movie was made 20+ years ago the locals said "we worked for them and helped them (Leahy Brothers) then and didn't know what they were doing - but they washed the sand and took away our gold. When our relatives died we would eat the flesh and throw the bones into the water and we thought this was the spirits returning and looking for their own bones in the water".

Well we were so pleased to have managed to squeeze First Contact in - so interesting and we arrive in Rabaul tomorrow morning! First we have our orientation for tomorrow in the lounge tonight at 7, then at 7:30 we have our South Seas BBQ on the back deck in the Delphinus Cafe. The sun is still shining under blue skies, due to set at 5:58pm - it's still very warm outside so it should be a lovely evening!

Mick gave the orientation and it sounds like a great day in Rabaul - we are doing the Volcano Adventure which will be the T? volcano, departing at 845am in the morning for half the ship, and the other half will be doing the Highlights of Rabaul. We were so thirtsy I can tell you that our G&T at the bar tonight was very welcome then we headed on to the back deck for the South Seas BBQ. We were under the stars at the Delphinus Cafe and the BBQ was set up in the middle of the deck, the breezes were very warm and Susan and Peter joined us for dinner. There were all sorts of seafood salads, a whole roast pig with cracklin', and on the barbie there were grilled lamb chops (highly recommended by those who ate them), tiger prawns and lime and chilli mahi mahi - and I recommend both of them highly!

The cold white Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc warmed up very quickly but it washed down the seafood in superb style! We did miss the crew show, and headed to bed after dinner, but we figure that we'll catch the crew show next week! Sorry boys!





Cheers ..... Jan Umbach
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