Sailors from HMAS Wewak have gone beyond their regular call of duty to help repair an airstrip with the Peace Monitoring Group's small engineering detachment on Bougainville.

The Kieta Airfield has recently deteriorated to a point that further rains would seriously erode the strip and sever the weekly RAAF lifeline with Australia.

The airfield's problems stem from a series of trenches dug across the strip by the BRA during Bougainville's 10-years of fighting.

The filled trenches have deteriorated with Bougainville's harsh weather and allowed moisture to permeate the base material causing the surface to move with each landing.

The bitumen was also starting to peel and crack off around some of the trenches.

The engineers and their assistants used the PMG's backhoe and whacker-packers to cut out the failed area and repack it with new material.

They used a base material quarried on the island, cement stabilised it and added an emulsion layer to bind the layers of material together.

STO HMAS Wewak, CPO Steve King said the request for help was an excellent opportunity for his sailors to get out and work with the other elements of the PMG.

"It's definitely not something you would usually find a group of sailors doing so it was good to get out do something different," CPO King said.

"We helped out on shovels and rakes and spent a bit of time learning the fine art of using a whacker-packer so we enjoyed it."

He said airfield repair work was not something any of his team usually did and they were quite proud of repairing two major failures in less than two days.