Line of Fire

by Ian Townsend

  A group of Japanese businessmen associated with NBK approached Harvey, probably through Harry Ralfs, and offered to pay his travel expenses to Japan to discuss business opportunities. Harvey had gold and possibly knew where to get iron. He produced copra, which was used in explosives and was in high demand in Japan. Harvey had been trading quietly with NBK and other Japanese traders for years but was never wealthy. Perhaps he now had more to trade.

  Harvey didn’t know exactly what the Japanese had in mind, but he firmly believed his stars had aligned. His inheritance, war in Europe and the flattery of the Japanese all came in one big wave that seemed like fate.

  In September 1939, just after Australia went to war with Germany, Harvey went to Japan, returning before Christmas to tell Marjorie about all he’d seen — notably the warships in the harbours — and the hospitality of the Japanese.

  Harvey was feeling even more generous and agreed to Marjorie’s suggestion that 23-year-old Jimmy should escort Dickie to New Guinea. She would get Dickie back, and Jimmy would be persuaded to stay on at the plantation. Just before Christmas 1939, Harvey paid their fares.

  Oh Ted!

  Perhaps Harvey was right about his stars aligning. Marjorie enrolled Dickie in the South Australian Correspondence School.

  What Phyllis thought of this isn’t known. She may have been pleased that Jimmy was over in New Guinea, keeping an eye on things and not going to war. He promised to send money home, but all of a sudden Gordon Road was quiet. It was just Joseph and Graham at the breakfast table, until George came back to Adelaide looking for work and mentioned enlisting.

  Over my dead body, said Phyllis. With war in Europe, she may have felt, unlike Marjorie, that everything was changing for the worse.

  At the beginning of 1940, Australia was secretly preparing for war with Japan and fortifying New Guinea in spite of the League of Nations mandate that forbade it.

  Part of those secret plans involved an old plan to use New Guinea planters as coastwatchers, to report any Japanese or German ships or planes.

  Eric Feldt, a former naval officer and the gold-mining warden who worked with Norman Fisher at Wau, was asked to recruit and activate the Coastwatchers. He gave the service the code name ‘Ferdinand’, from the children’s story and the recent Disney film he’d seen, Ferdinand the Bull.

  ‘It was a reminder to them that it was not their duty to fight and thus draw attention to themselves,’ said Feldt. ‘Like Disney’s bull, who just sat under a tree and smelled the flowers, it was their duty to sit, circumspectly and unobtrusively, and gather information.’

  Feldt travelled the remote coasts, secretly recruiting. When he stepped ashore at Lassul Bay, Harvey took him up to the house and handed him the customary drink. Feldt explained Ferdinand, and Harvey told him that he’d just seen Japan’s war machine up close and was certainly ready to do his duty. And he showed Feldt the bulky AWA Teleradio he’d recently bought himself. Feldt was astonished. It was the same type Ferdinand would use. He didn’t know Harvey well, but added him to his list.

  Top secret, said Feldt. You’re not to mention it to anyone.

  Of course, of course, top secret.

  When Feldt left, Harvey might have told Marjorie the gist of the conversation.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ted, it won’t come to that.

  You’ll see. You’ll see. I’ll show you what the Japs are up to if you like.

  Are you serious?

  He was. After being rejected as medically unfit several times in the Great War, Harvey was finally being given a role commensurate with the skills he knew he had. Although he had technically served in the Great War, briefly being an orderly on a hospital ship wasn’t fighting. He now knew he’d been saved for a greater purpose. Destiny was finally tapping him on the shoulder.

  In March 1940, Harvey sat down and wrote to the Australian Department of the Army, offering to travel to Japan and spy for them. His offer was summarised in an official memo that went all the way up to the Australian Minister for External Affairs.

  Mr A.A. Harvey . . . proposes to make a trip to Japan on the S.S. Nellore accompanied by his wife and son. Mr Harvey has approached this department with the suggestion that the expenses of this trip should be paid in return for a report on activities in Japan. This suggestion has been refused.

  Harvey had told them in detail about his recent trip to Japan, believing he had some special status as a member of Ferdinand (which he didn’t mention, having been sworn to secrecy). What alarmed the army most was that the Japanese had not only paid for his last trip to Japan, but had asked him to act against Australia’s interests.

  ‘They invited him to write propaganda articles and asked if he could supply scrap iron or pig iron,’ the army’s report stated. ‘The Japanese met by Harvey were: K. Oka of Hinode Studio, 2 Chome Sannomiya. K. Suzuki, deportee of Rabaul where he had been representative of Nan’yo Boyeki [sic] Kaisha. Y. Tabuchi who now represents German firms in Japan, but is believed to have been a resident of Rabaul at some time.’

  Oka was a photographer in Kobe, the major steel and naval base. Suzuki and Tabuchi were both employees of NBK. Tabuchi Yoshimatsu had left Rabaul with his wife and four children in October 1938, believing then that war was imminent. When Harvey met him in Japan at the end of 1939, Tabuchi was an agent for the Germans, with whom Australia was already at war. Harvey was being groomed.

  ‘He is considered to be most unreliable and it is not intended to utilise him in any capacity,’ said the army’s report to the External Affairs minister, Jack McEwan.

  The army’s investigation didn’t reveal that Ted had already been recruited into the navy’s coastwatching service. Ferdinand was so secret, few outside the navy knew about it. The army investigation also revealed that Harvey had been visited at Lassul by Harry Ralfs, ‘believed to be an agent or smuggler associating with the Asiatics’.

  Harvey might have had no sympathy for Japan, but the Department of the Army was alarmed by his strange offer to spy while on holidays with his family.

  Harvey was undeterred and in April 1940 he took Marjorie and Dickie to Japan anyway, sailing from Rabaul to Yokohama.

  The minister, Jack McEwan, warned the British that Harvey was coming, writing personally to the ambassador in Tokyo that Harvey ‘may represent himself in Japan to be accredited by the Department of the Army’.

  Harvey was oblivious to the high-level anxiety he’d caused, and after leaving Japan sailed straight down to Sydney with Marjorie and Dickie to make a report to the army.

  The visit to Australia became an opportunity for Marjorie to see her parents and make peace with Phyllis. She’d talked Ted into paying for Phyllis and Joseph to travel from Adelaide to meet them in Sydney. Phyllis was determined not to like him, and later described him as abrupt and arrogant. Marjorie wanted to show her parents that she had fallen on her feet. She took them sightseeing to Manly and gave them a Japanese tea set and vase.

  And then the trip was over.

  It’s not forever. Marjorie wanted her mother to be happy for her. Dickie now had a father, she said. Jimmy was going to stay on the plantation and help manage it. Ted Harvey agreed to ask George to come over, to skipper the boat he’d bought.

  George can’t drive boats either, Phyllis might have pointed out.

  Of course he can, said Marjorie. He’s a whizz with engines.

  Is Uncle George coming over, too? said Dickie.

  Not if I can help it, muttered Phyllis.

  I think everyone seems to be forgetting about the war, said Joseph.

  Phyllis and Joseph watched them board the Nellore to sail back to Rabaul. Marjorie and Dickie came to the railing to wave, and that was the last time Phyllis saw them. Marjorie had asked her father to ask George to come over, and later that year George went. Phyllis said goodbye to a second son. Only Graham, still finishing an apprenticeship, remained.

  In October 1940, Harvey was officially admitted to the Coast Watch Organisation, Ferdinand, and given his s
tation number VKZ9 and a special ‘X’ crystal diode, with which he could transmit on a special frequency to Rabaul and Port Moresby.

  Three months later he was cut from Ferdinand. Feldt, then the staff officer (Intelligence) at Port Moresby, had heard about the army’s report describing Harvey as ‘unreliable’ and had crossed him off the list, writing ‘unreliable’ beside his name, with no other explanation. (Although Ferdinand was supposed to be top secret, it was rumoured in Rabaul that Harvey was dropped from the service for using the special frequency to order beer for Christmas.)

  Harvey was again undeterred and kept the AWA Teleradio (he owned it after all) and carried on transmitting reports on commercial frequencies. The radio was a big piece of equipment: three metal boxes each about a foot deep, a foot wide and two feet long, powered by car batteries that could be charged by a small petrol engine which weighed about 65 pounds (30 kilograms). It wasn’t easy to move, and Harvey wasn’t about to abandon the idea of doing his bit. He began to plan for a siege.

  We’re the only white people between the Japs and Australia, you know.

  Yes, Ted. Marjorie had begun to dismiss most of Harvey’s fanciful plans, but her future was now inextricably tied to his. George came over to sail the motor schooner, and Jimmy, with the help of Harvey’s inheritance, was bringing the plantation back from the brink of ruin.

  Most importantly, Marjorie had Dickie back. Dickie was thriving on the plantation and, for the moment, that was all that mattered.

  CHAPTER 20

  At night heavy growls and rumblings echo from the crater and many shocks are felt making one wonder whether ere long the whole place will be blown to atoms.

  — ‘Rabaul under Dust and Ashes’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 September 1941

  From Press reports, it appears that Rabaul has been rendered untenable by the seriousness of the eruption of Tavurvur. United States War and Navy Departments being advised accordingly.

  — MOST SECRET: Naval Attaché, Washington, to Chief of Naval Staff, Melbourne, 11 October 1941

  It is quite incorrect to say that Rabaul rendered untenable by eruption . . . War Cabinet has decided today that it is proper to accept element of risk involved . . . United States offer should certainly be accepted.

  — MOST SECRET: Chief of Naval Staff, Melbourne, to Naval Attaché, Washington, 15 October 1941

  A boy about ten or eleven years old, about Dickie’s age when he died, appears from nowhere and walks beside me up Tunnel Hill Road. He’s holding a slingshot.

  ‘What do you shoot with that?’ I ask.

  ‘Birds.’

  Suddenly there are half a dozen children walking up the road with me. ‘What do you do with them when you shoot them?’

  They all burst into laughter and the question is never answered.

  The climb to the Rabaul Volcano Observatory, first up out of the town and then a sharp right following a ridge, is sapping. It isn’t far, it isn’t high, it isn’t even that hot. For most of the way, it is shaded by huge trees and vines. But it is humid. My shirt is sodden and I can feel my face glowing red. The kids are grinning at me; I am under pressure to say something.

  ‘What are those holes there?’ The road as it climbs is cut into the caldera wall and there are rows of deep dark tunnels.

  ‘Caves,’ says the boy with the slingshot. ‘We go in there,’ he points at one cave. ‘Come out there,’ he points at another.

  ‘You play in there?’

  ‘You see me, you see me,’ and Slingshot runs off, followed by the other kids, into the cave.

  ‘Woo hoo.’

  And then they all start pointing their fingers at each other, ‘Drrrrr, drrrr.’ They vanish into the dark and then reappear at the mouth of a cave next door.

  ‘Soldiers were in there?’

  ‘Yeah yeah, long time ago. War. They make this caves. Woo hoo. Woo hoo. Japs hide inside, get the gun and . . . drrrr.’

  I know there are caves along this road where Australian and New Zealand and American prisoners of war, mainly airmen, were held in the last years of the Pacific War. More than 100,000 Japanese and their prisoners were forced out of town and to dig into the soft volcanic ground to escape the bombs.

  ‘Where do you come from?’ asks Slingshot.

  ‘Brisbane.’

  ‘Oh oh oh. Bris-bun. Broncos.’ Suddenly we are talking about rugby league. ‘Thaiday Thaiday.’ Sam Thaiday, who plays for the Broncos. ‘And the Storm. Billy Slater.’

  Rugby league is a religion in New Guinea, and Slingshot rattles off all the players in the Queensland State of Origin team.

  A van labours up the hill and stops beside me.

  ‘Lift?’ asks the driver. It is hot. I am drenched. The side door slides open.

  ‘See you later, Slingshot.’

  ‘Bye bye, Bris-bun.’

  ‘Careful. There’s a problem with that door,’ says the driver. ‘The roller,’ as the door shoots back, ‘could take your hand off.’

  Within a minute I am at the top of the ridge and the driver, one of the observatory workers, parks the van beside the narrow road on a grass verge and walks off to the buildings.

  The Rabaul Volcano Observatory sits 300 metres above the town on a narrow ridge about ten metres wide. Palms and flowering frangipani grow here and there, framing the town, the volcanoes and the harbour. This is the tourist snapshot of Rabaul, so I take out my camera. Click click.

  The ridge is on the western slope of the North Daughter volcano, Tovanumbatir. Tavui Point, where the Coote family home once stood, is on the other side of the volcano, which has a foot in both the Rabaul and Tavui calderas.

  Another volcano, the Mother, Kabui, is the tallest peak on Crater Peninsula, which runs away to the hazy south-east. The South Daughter, Turangunan, is at the peninsula’s far end. Between the Mother and the South Daughter is steaming Tavurvur, and on the side of the Mother is a hot crater called Rabalanakaia.

  Vulcan, the black sheep of the family, now green from top to toe and pretending to sleep, is on the other side of the silvery blue harbour. I count seven volcanoes including Sulphur Creek, which is smoking, but only because it’s the site of the town’s rubbish tip. Click click.

  The observatory is a cluster of white buildings on a neatly trimmed lawn. Planted in the lawn are large granite boulders with brass plaques screwed into them. I bend down to read the nearest: ‘In Memory of Robin Cooke and Elias Ravian, who died in the course of volcanological duties at Karkar Island on 8 March 1979.’

  Robin Cooke was the senior volcanologist at the Rabaul Observatory and he and Elias Ravian, an observatory worker, were camped near the southern rim of the volcano on Karkar Island, in the Bismarck Sea, when hot gas and rocks swept over their camp. It’s a reminder that volcanoes are dangerous even when seemingly quiet and still relatively unpredictable.

  I take a photograph of this plaque and when I lower the camera the rock is moving from side to side. The climb must have made me lightheaded.

  ‘Guria,’ yells the driver, running back to the van to put the handbrake on so it doesn’t roll off the precipice.

  The rock moves as if it’s standing in jelly and then stops. The driver grins and waves and walks back to the observatory, and I follow.

  ‘It’s just a normal tectonic earthquake,’ explains the observatory’s principal geodetic surveyor, Steve Saunders. ‘About a month ago we were getting quite a few of them. This is the first one in a while. Or at least a few weeks.’

  It was a magnitude 5.3, a bit of a yawn for Rabaul. A few months earlier there were two earthquakes over magnitude 7.

  Inside the observatory it’s cool, the airconditioner struggles, and the machines and computers chatter among themselves. We’re standing in front of a large map on a wall in the old part of the observatory, perhaps part of the one built for Fisher in 1940.

  ‘The earthquake we just had is probably to do with this subduction,’ says Steve, pointing at the sea south of Rabaul. This is where a lot of the earthquakes
originate because the earth’s crust here is moving really fast in geological terms: around 13 centimetres a year. That causes big earthquakes, especially when the plates that are sliding past each other stick for a few years and then suddenly let go.

  ‘That’s what happened in 2000,’ says Steve, ‘when Rabaul suddenly jumped 60 centimetres north, causing two magnitude 8 earthquakes.’

  I look at the ground. If it moved more than half a metre now, the map, the wall, the entire building would hit me in the face.

  ‘Some guys have been doing what’s called the crustal motion study and they had GPS set up and they realised this’ — Steve points to another part of the map — ‘was all moving about 13 centimetres a year. But we,’ he says, pointing to Rabaul, ‘were only moving about half that. And that’s because we were locked onto the Pacific Plate and being pulled back.’

  The island of New Britain is shaped like a banana because the top end, where we are standing, is moving north faster than the bottom end.

  ‘So what happened was that those earthquakes in 2000 meant it broke and we caught up with the rest. And that’s why we moved 60 centimetres. Which was quite spectacular.’

  Perhaps more spectacular was a larger earthquake on 14 January 1941, a year after Fisher had moved into his new observatory. At 2.27 in the morning, the jolt woke up everyone on the Gazelle Peninsula, including Marjorie and Dickie at Lassul. Marjorie’s Japanese crockery fell from the dresser, all the dogs were howling, and Harvey thought it was artillery. The ground shook for several minutes. The island had ruptured, like a piece of paper being torn from one end to the other, along the mountains behind the plantation. The land was ripped apart at a speed of about two kilometres a second.

  In Rabaul, the earthquake broke Fisher’s seismographs in the observatory’s basement. It knocked houses off their stilts and 150 water tanks burst. In the higher parts of the Baining Mountains, landslides dammed rivers and people drowned when the dams later broke and the water swept away villages.