Meanwhile, in the tropical islands…

I was invited to go and take some pictures on Watom island, half an hour's open boat ride across the Pacific from Rabaul. Made the trip on Saturday a week ago. Specifically, the islanders were interested in someone taking some pictures of the Japanese tunnels dug out at their village during WW II, in the hope that they might be part of a tourist attraction they are trying to put together.

Since I was an invited guest for the day, I didn't have the luxury of being able to choose best light times and whatever. It was a case of getting the pictures and talking through some ideas for setting up a pleasant tourist experience. I took the GX7, the 12-35, 9-18, and 45-150 lenses, and two flashes, an FL36R and FL600R, plus the MacBook Pro 15" in the backpack.

I had planned to post that night or last Sunday, but for some reason, I couldn't upload some of the pix to DPReview, and then I got busy, so…

Watom was garrisoned by the Japanese during the entire time they held Rabaul as their south-eastern HQ and operations center. Nobody is sure now what its function was but it is thought it had a role as guarding the northern approach to Rabaul. In the event, it was never called into action; the Allies isolated and bypassed Rabaul with the idea that they would let it fall when Japan surrendered. That was a wiser decision than they knew at the time; Allied intel (based on half of nothing -- just the photos taken during the continuous massive bombing of Rabaul) said there were maybe 50,000 poorly supplied and starving Japanese soldiers there. The Allies were astonished at the end of the war to find there were 100,000 Japanese with lots of guns and ammunition, dug in deeply, and fat and happy living off the Tolai people's gardens (the Tolais were not so fortunate; the first postwar census put their numbers at nearly a third lower than the last prewar census). An attempted invasion would have been a total bloodbath.

On the beach at Nonga, near Rabaul. The coconut frond baskets packed with garden produce are brought from Watom Island (in the background) for sale in the Rabaul and Kokopo markets. A small group of women will come to Rabaul or Kokopo for a week at a time, working as "maket meris" (women market stall holders) selling their own produce and that of others in their extended families. Since Rabaul was devastated by the volcanoes in 1994, intermittent mutterings, and last year, Kokopo, 25km away, has become the main town in the area.

On the boat nearing Watom. You sit on a plank floor. The young girl at the front is on the look out for floating debris. There is no problem with reefs -- the water here is hugely deep, as can be seen by the blue water running up to close inshore. Watom Island is the tip of an old volcano perhaps 1500 meters high from the sea bed with just a circlet of reef around it. If you look up Watom Island on Google Earth you can just make out the old crater in the center; it is all disguised now by heavy growth. At some point, the island was lower because the stone for quite some height up from the beach is limestone -- old, raised coral reef. Nasty stuff, very uneven, pointy and sharp. It tears up your footwear and if you fall, gives you deep bruises or tears the skin. Not good. Volcanoes move up and down quite often, mostly over geological time but sometimes quite obviously!

Some traditional decoration added to the entrance/outlet/??? of one of the tunnels. it is the only opening with a concrete surround; the others are simply openings in the rock. Nobody who was there at the time is alive today but it is said that this was a gun emplacement. Certainly, it commanded most of the beach.

The same opening looking out. Trying for some appearance of reality, I had the FL600R mounted on the GX7 but pointed backwards. The stone is limestone, not the usual dull volcanic compacted soil stone, so there was a bit of whitish surface to bounce the light. This gave me three light sources, the light coming in through the opening, the battery lantern, and the bounced flash set to under expose by two stops. It all came up pretty well, I thought, and with chimping(!!!) I managed this on just the second shot. The Panasonic AWB doing a good job too, as usual.

The opening to one of the tunnels with a couple of local children adding some life!

This was a spy hole, I am told, one of three in the village -- just a small opening that a watcher could use to keep an eye on the sea and the beach area in one direction. A sniper could also have worked out of the hole. Subsequent growth has blocked the field of view.

Another spy hole. I had to scramble up some very nasty rocks to get into position for this shot. I used the GX7's pop-up flash to add just a smidgen of light to the shadows and I opened them up a little more in PP.

A view inside a tunnel.

It's the mango season here with half-a-dozen different kinds of mango falling from the trees and threatening to hit you on the head at any moment! Need a basket for the mangoes you are collecting? Just swing the ever present bushknife (machete) to chop off a small coconut palm frond, plait it up, and voila -- your basket is ready!

And, of course, when you have mangoes you eat them! Here you get the upside of the limestone bedrock -- it means the soil is alkaline and fruit is sweet, sweet, sweet.

On the beach in the afternoon just before we left. I would have liked to have taken this shot at dawn, but we had to fit in with the normal boat movements, so we arrived in mid-morning and left in mid-afternoon. Mind you, I do like this high sun light for this kind of picture here because it tl me it screams "tropical" -- bright, hot sun is us! The dugout canoes are in daily use for fishing, both over the reef and in the open sea. The outboard powered boat is known locally as a "banana boat" -- why, I don't know. They are normally powered by 40hp or 60hp Yamaha motors.