under the surface - scuba diving finds

Hope it's all there for ya's,....maybe split it with the traditional owners then

went diving again at Altona. Visibility was about 2 meters at best, then when I started fanning for targets it got even less.
If I get time tomorrow or Monday I'll take a photo of the finds, a few dollars, junk jewelry, and stuff people drop off the pier including a tiny aquarium net???
I'm using a second hand Garrett Sea Hunter 2 (which I'm calling Sea Grunter from now on), I also gave the Deteknix Diver pinpointer a good run, low light and viz meant often I couldn't see anything near the coil.

I still think that rate RED Led is neat feature..

Veeeeery interesting topic! I had not stumbled upon it before, thanks for the entertainment gents.

I have some nice old bottles I have found over the years. A few years back I was deployed to the Solomon Islands, ended up being there for two years and got to know a few parts of Guadalcanal and Malaita Islands. The waters between Guadalcanal and the Florida's is called Iron Bottom Sound and with good reason, 32 Allied and at least 18 Japanese ships sleep on the sea bed. So it is with good reason that for the sailors, airmen and soldiers who served in the area during that time, Iron Bottom Sound is considered a cemetery and sacred, much the same as Pearl Harbour and the USS Arizona memorial.

During the 63rd Anniversary of the US landings on Red Beach out near Tetere, a small group of US Veterans visited our lines and we hosted them for a dinner. Grand old warriors, gentlemen all of them and one of those moments in my life that I am humble to have had: The men that were there, giving us a first hand account of contacts and battles, killings and casualties right where they had happened, you could see them re-living their history. Powerful stuff. The gentleman who had organised the visit was a Royal Airforce Bomber Command pilot who had survived many missions over The Channel to Germany and had retired to Florida in the USA.

You don't have to go far to find chunks of old rusty iron on the beaches around Honiara as not far west towards Bonegi Beach and beyond, seven Japanese ships found their watery graves. One, the supply ship Hirokawa Maru was beached by her captain before sinking and the bow and a fair amount of deck are exposed at low tide. I have free dived on it quite a few times, it never lost its thrill. Up behind Honiara is the US War Memorial that is maintained by the US Government and has a commanding view over the sound and Savo Island. Savo is a live volcano that is owned by one of the former Solomon Island Prime Ministers. I cant remember his name, I would have to check my diary notes of my visit but, I do recall that he had been knighted. It is a magnificent view, I used to visit there sometimes and along with quiet contemplation, I would imagine what the naval and air battles where like; the monstrous anger and 'wump, wump' of heavy naval artillery, the thumping punch and staccato of 30 and 50 cal. machine guns and, the terrifying screams of supercharged radial engines over revving in a terminal dive.

I spent a bit of time exploring, with the help of the locals, around the hinterland villages along Bonegi Creek. We were shown aircraft crash sites and the site of a US military dump. The dump was just a ridge-line that dropped off into a deep gulch were hundred of tons of rubbish and then surplus was dumped. I used to head that way on Sunday arvo's when I could get a Troopie to use and spent hours down in that gulch in the steaming jungle scrounging and ratting through it all. Most was rusted or corroded away from the constant tropical coastal conditions but I did find some interesting relics.

One of the more common refuse items from the war are old US made 6 Fl Oz coke bottles. All have the date and place of manufacture cast into them on or around the base, for example 'Oakland Calif' & 'San Francisco Calif'. Most are a light green glass but some very late ones were clear glass. They could be found washed up after a storm along the coast, in the jungle or on some of the outer islands, huge middens of them the locals had piled up.

Another place I liked to visit and managed to take my children to on a return trip to the Solomons after the civil war had ended, is Red Beach. Red Beach is a long flat and repetitively level beach that is the site where the US Marines landed in AmTracs on 7th August 1942. Amtracs are amphibious landing craft that look very much like a small tank or APC, but are made of light gauge steel and the tracks have cast aluminium 'cleats' in place of rubber or steel friction plates that work like a paddle steamers wheel. There are still 96 Amtracs lined up as in a parking lot, a few hundred metres from the shore line and just behind the leaf hut of the man who's great grand father met the Marine Colonel as the Marines landed and secured the beach head. There are also half a dozen or so of the rusting hulks of these near 75 year old machines scattered about the front of the leaf hut and for a small consideration the owner of the custom land and leaf hut will show you about. If you are luck, he will proudly show you his old sepia photos of his Great Grandfather with the Colonel, with the Colonels written account of the event written in his hand on the back of the old photo. More living history that I feel very fortunate to have experienced.

Inside the first 4 months of my tour, I was posted to a Provincial coastal town called Maluu on the tip of Malaita Island. Our long house looked down from a small plateau over the bay that was formed by reefs, sand bars and the near by Basacana Island that lay a bout 1000m off shore. I used to pay $50 Solomon ($AUS9.00) for a big chaff bag full of live lobsters and about $2 Sol for the biggest mud crabs I have ever seen, the claws where the same size as my hands. Yep, we ate well which sort of made up a little for being in such a remote and phucked up part of the work with no phones and the usual attendant deprivations of mission life.

In the bay, there was a Japanese Zero that had crashed into the shallows of the bay in 1942 and ended belly-up. The pilot survived the crash but the local village chiefs decided his punishment as an enemy was death so they removed his head. I could not find out what happened to the body but cannibalism is documented as being widely practiced on Malaita where the people although now Christian, still have strong beliefs in animism and witchcraft and are very superstitious. The Solomon Islands still has Anti-Sorcery legislation and sorcery is today an offence under both state and customary laws in Solomon Islands. Sorcery in Solomon Islands can refer to an act or action that causes serious sickness or illness that could result in misfortune, insanity or death if no customary means of cure is given to the victim.

The Penal Code, Chap. 26, S. 190 refers to sorcery as:
i) the performance of any magical ritual where there is a general belief
among a class of persons that may result in harm to any person; or
ii) the possession of articles (without lawful excuse) commonly
associated by any class of persons with harmful magic.

I cant say that I am a believer in much beyond that which is tangible and explained in science but the locals are shit scared of this stuff and have some very strange (to us) practices and beliefs. Lots of 'Tambu' places with skulls and creepy stuff and when people get 'Big Sick', very often locals believe that s sorcerer is at work.

Ok, enough of my reminiscences for one evening.

Regards,

The Peacekeeper

Wow , very captivating read ... Thanks

You are very welcome sandta, I have been fortunate to have gotten about a bit and had some adventures. I think we all like revisiting our salad days in our minds. Generally, I don't talk much about these times other than with those I shared them because I don't want to seem boastful. But, I do enjoy writing the odd account, even if they are mostly accidental, starting off as a short response or comment and ending as an excerpt of what the Solomon Islanders would call, 'Stori belong mi'. They are mostly for my own edification but, I am pleased that at least a few people have gotten something out of this one.

Regards,

The Peackeeper

You keep writing them Peecekeeper1966 and i'll keep reading them.
Thanks again
Mackka

If I ever meet any of you in person, and you want to hear a story of what may be an awesome find.... Just ask.
I cant relate it here, but its a bloody good story that I sincerely believe is true.

[video=480,360]https://youtu.be/X63za92brL0[/video]

Robert

That Deteknix Diver seems to be doing the job...

it definitely is.
It found more than half the coins I scored on the day along with really small stuff like bobby pins that I just couldn't see even when I'd scooped them out of the hole. I might need to drop some weight into the back though to make it slightly less bouyant but that's something to tinker with.

Very happy with it.

YEP...

There is plenty of space to add some weight to assist with buoyancy

Just make sure it is secure, well not just a big ball sinker - left to roll around

no probs - will pad out whatever I stuff in behind the recharge port so it doesn't smash up the insides.

Ladies and Gents, I have found a bit of time this evening to write a little more on some of my times away from home. Since the fist one was well received by our membership, I will push on with some more time permitting.

My humble appreciation, The Peacekeeper.

Stori Blong Mi Long Taem Mi Stap Long Solomon Aelan

Mid-March 2006, 18.34 hrs and I had pulled together enough rations to make up a beef stew for dinner in the kitchen - come radio room of our Long House. Presently, the aromas from the languid and seemingly constipated bubbling from the pot of 'boeuf de jour' were over powered by the ever more pungent paint fumes from the Dulux 101 Clotted Cream that my two comrades slapped over the Globite school-bag tat of the Masonite walls. The grabbing closeness of the afternoon monsoon conspired with the paint fumes to drive me out onto the back veranda. I needed a breath of air anyway.

Gaz, a tall rangy Queenslander with God Bothering leanings and gangly primate arms that enabled him to reach the ceiling, was slapping away with his brush, steadily leaving a trail of sweat drips from his elongated aquiline nose on to Rose's (our House Mary) immaculate floor. At the same time that Gaz painted over the gloom of the close confining walls that reminded me of the Head Masters Office at Old Bar Public School, with the same bloody colour as my walls at home, which just made me think of my wife and kids even more, each slap of those pig bristles ironically dragged my mood down another notch.

Big Maf, a huge but kindly and gentle Pacific Islander was much like Paddington- a bear of very few words. When Maf wanted to tell you that we were getting low on anti-malarials, he just tilted and motioned his lantern jaw towards the container on the fridge where the doxycycline tablets lived, next to the salt pig and pepper grinder. As with everything he did, Maf was uncomplainingly toiling away with the paint roller, filling in the bulk of the canvass that Gaz fussed over with the cutting in and other brush work. It was times like this that I was glad I enjoyed doing most of the cooking.

The Long House was about 30 meters stem to stern and 8 meters in beam and had been built by Australian Army Engineers. It had an elevated veranda at the rear, some 4 metres wide, that served as our dining room, sleep-out and laundry and the outer walls as well as the roof were made or corrugated iron. The ceiling was an open cavity, except for our secure storeroom come armoury, so there wasnt much to stop the tropical sun from punching through and super heating the place particularly when we were away patrolling and locked the joint up.

The veranda was also the focus of our rest hours as well as a place for meals, meetings, paperwork and discussions because it was generally the coolest place in our compound. This was due to the roof, unlike the rest of our post, being made from leaf-hut panels that were a coconut frond split down its spine and then thatched together by hand to make a roughly 1 metre by 3 metre panel. Cost per panel-$2.00 Sol Dollars or 40cents Aus. Like many variations on natural roofing materials in the Pacific and South-East Asia, the leaf-hut panels when over laid in a thick bank, are all-but waterproof and provided very good insulation from relentless equatorial suns rays.

Despite the isolation from the outside world with sat-phones and Barret HF radios for comms, Provincial Postings in the Solomon Islands were reasonably comfortable. For a start it was good not to have to walk a mile to an SAL (showers and latrines) block when you need a shite in the middle of the night and it was pissing down outside. Also, not having to share with hundreds of others the shower facilities with manky tinea and wiry pubic-hair clogged drain holes or being condemned to cleaning your teeth as a platoon of wild PNG Infantrymen take their curried-fish morning ablutions just the other side of a thin panel was more than consolation. Those poor toilet cleaners back at the main base on Guadalcanal must have felt like Chewbaccas wifes gynecologist.

After a few days you would acclimatise to the constant heat but it was still difficult getting off to sleep some very hot and humid nights. The technique I developed for a good nights sleep was to physically tire yourself with some sort of hard labour to accompany the mental tiredness that seemed to always find me at the end of the day. I set about making tropical gardens and a vegetable patch in our compound and for this a bought ten truckloads of soil from a local village chief. It was all done by hand, just shovels and a mattock. I had a couple of local lads as helpsters for this but, Melanesians can be a pretty sedentary lot who operate on Island Time and as I soon learned, with this sort of thing, I was on my own. So, shoveling dirt and collecting and transplanting tropical plants to improve the looks of the post was just the ticket for a sound sleep of the dead. It is also worth noting here that the same spade work also served to dig the foundations of good relationships between white officers and the locals, as there were still some residual hang-overs and stigma from the days of British Administration with some older folk. I certainly felt it many times and found myself feeling a degree of shame and embarrassment at what is known in such circumstances as the power imbalance.

Now, the other part of the technique was to shower (we had no hot water) immediately before bed and then without drying off, lay spread-eagle on top of your bed with a pedestal fan turned up to 27 blasting away at you. Big Maf just slept out on the veranda with the geckos and a mozzie coil. No covers, just shorts and sometimes a t-shirt and the mozzie coil between him, malaria, dengue fever and thousands of bloody cane toads!

Our Long House and the few Government buildings were about 200 meters from the ocean and elevated on a slight plateau which helped some days to catch the sea breeze. Directly outside our compound fence was the local sports field where soccer dominated the sporting interests of the local kids and youth. The oval also served as the primary and high school playground, the two story wood and wire windowed buildings of which huddled together within sight of our front door. Maf took it upon himself to keep that oval mowed and must have gone through a whole 44 gallon drum of fuel every few months in doing so, but it was a kind thing to do and I admired Maf for it and the many other selfless things he did for the community.

The villages surrounding Maluu were spread out as there was a reasonable sized coastal plain to the east that permitted a generous interval between each chiefs village limits. Within about half a click of the Government buildings was a cluster of government employee houses. Teachers, Police Officers, Nurses and a few other public officials had called the houses home until the start of the civil war, known locally and understatedly as The Tensions. All bar a few places were uninhabitable due to being shot up, fire bombed, vandalised, stripped and looted by the Malaitan Eagle Force (MEF), the dominant rebel militia group. The MEF just happened to have been based in Maluu and their Head Quarters building was only a hundred metres or so to the west of and at the foot of our plateau. MEF HQ was a regular source of trouble and a focus for civil unrest and criminal activity even though the MEF had been decapitated and largely dismantled by RAMSI Forces (Regional Assistance Mission Solomon Islands).

A good number of local people were still loyal or, shite scared of the MEF and the few rebels still at large. One particular thorn in our side was the countries most wanted man John Toloi. Toloi was an MEF rebel and had been on the run since a contact and gun battle with a RAMSI patrol one morning when he had been hunted down to a particular house in Maluu. The patrol suffered no casualties in the exchange and Tolois SLR (7.62 mm Self Loading Rifle) Rifle had a stoppage that had saved one particular RAMSI officers life as he stared down the barrel. It is believed that Toloi had taken a 5.56 or 9 mm round through a tricep but he had made good his escape into the Malaitan hinterland jungle.

Hi Peacekeeper,

I think it might be appropriate to start a separate thread to better share your recollections?

Robert

If the moderators are OK with that, I would be thankful? But, it would have been presumptuous of me to just do so from the outset I believe.

The Peacekeeper.

Just about everyone reading that material, would have thought a new post was just a great idea. At least I would think so.

Great material.

Go Ahead Peacekeeper.
Start your thread then copy and past your articles into it.
I will then come along and mop up for you.
Looking forwards to many hours of reading.

Look forward to the next one, good job.

Cheers, DD

Thanks for a dedicated space for my words Tathradj, thank you everyone else for your kind permission.

The Peacekeeper