By
Graham Davis
The
urgent need to re-chart a vital 100m wide narrows and a lagoon
where the navigation markers had been felled, has seen a three-person
team of hydrographic specialists from Wollongong, work in the
Solomon Islands.
The team’s services were certainly needed to provide RAN warships
and commercial vessels with safe passage. “We found an island
complete with trees had formed in the Diamond Narrows.
It wasn’t on the 1964 chart,” LCDR Mick Rigby, head of the Hydrographic
Division’s HODSU team, explained upon return to Australia.
Called a “rapid environmental assessment,” LCDR Rigby, Petty Officer
Hydrographic Systems Manager, Jaime Looten, and Able Seaman Hydrographic
Systems Operator, Melanie Osborne, were tasked by COMAST, RADM
Marc Bonser to proceed to New Georgia to chart a safe route between
the towns of Munda and Noro so that RAN patrol boats and landing
craft could more quickly reach Noro where good quality diesel
fuel was available.
Accurate charts were also needed for commercial operators.
The trio went to HMAS Cairns, borrowed a six metre “tinny” (later
dubbed the African Queen) from HMAS Paluma, loaded their equipment
into the cargo well of HMAS Tarakan and with CO LCDR Dave Hannah
and his ship’s company, headed for Munda.
Getting safely into Munda proved “job and a half” because the
villagers last year had felled the navigation poles, “leads” and
diamonds, to deter unwanted visitors reaching their town. (The
locals knew where the channels lay.)
“Tarakan’s RHIB was launched and it proceeded ahead of the landing
ship calling the depth,” LCDR Rigby recalls.
“The water was clear so we could see the markers lying on the
bottom of the lagoon. “Some markers had been replaced by wooden
poles jammed into the stumps of the original ‘leads’.
“I remember Tarakan navigating by the sound of milk bottles tinkling
against each other on one of these poles called ‘whiffy’.”
Upon arrival LCDR Rigby and his companions got to work charting
the Roviana Lagoon off Munda, the Singer Channel and the Diamond
Narrows.
The narrows are an extinct volcano tube and at places are only
100 metres wide.
They also relocated a Japanese Zero, Japanese Bettie and a US
Corsair on the bed of the Roviana Lagoon.
