Rabaul, Papua New Guinea

In 1983 I spent about a week at Rabaul, a beautiful small town on the island of New Britain, which is part of Papua New Guinea. The primary purpose of my trip was to dive the shipwrecks at Rabaul (which you can see in my Shipwrecks section). But I found Rabaul to be a wonderful place, even without the shipwrecks.

These New Guinean men took me by outrigger canoe to one of the local volcanoes. It's name was Mt.Tavurvur (pronounced Ta-voo-voo), but it was also called Matupit Crater (pronounced Ma-too-pee). It was the smallest of the volcanic cones that surrounded Rabaul, but it was the most active of them all. It had erupted fiercely in 1937, when it and Mt. Vulcan had destroyed Rabaul. In the years since then Matupit had erupted (less violently) several more times. The men with the canoes lived in one of the villages on Matupit Island, which was across a small bay from the volcano. The bay was calm and smooth. After just a few minutes we came ashore on a black sand beach at the base of the short, steep mountain. The beach sand was hot from volcanic steam being vented from below, and there were visible plumes of steam in the narrow jungle that ringed the base of the cone.

(Note: This volcano erupted again in 1994. It completely obliterated the town of Rabaul, and forever buried the Hakkai Maru and Rabaul's other shipwrecks under tons of volcanic ash).

Rabaul harbor is actually the crater of a huge, ancient volcano. This rock, called "The Beehive", is the plug of that volcano.

I spent a couple of hours here one day while my dive guide was taking some less experienced divers to a shallow wreck between my dives. I climbed all the way to the top of it.

Not far from Rabaul is a place called The Submarine Base. During WWII it had actually been a Japanese Navy submarine base. At the water's edge was the almost vertical, rock face of a large mountain, into which had been carved several tunnels, just above the high-tide water line. All along the shore, just below the surface of the water, a flat reef extended about 50 yards into the ocean. Some concrete pylons and rusted pieces of steel were all that remained of the small railroad tracks that had, during the war, run from the tunnels in the cliff to the edge of the reef. Just at the edge of the reef, the water dropped off to a depth of over 600 feet! The place really was a perfect, natural submarine base! The Jap subs could be moored at the edge of the reef, to be serviced and supplied by rail from the underground facilities. At the first sign of trouble the subs could submerge in place, to ride out the battle in undersea safety. As soon as the bombers were clear the subs could resurface and continue their activities.