Vanuatu: Million dollar point

Excerpt from Cabinet by Sasha Archibald
see www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/10/million_point.php

At the end of the war, sometime between August 1945 and December 1947, the US military interred supplies, equipment, and vehicles under water. The travel writer Thurston Clarke describes the scene:

The Seabees built a ramp running into the sea and every day Americans drove trucks, jeeps, ambulances, bulldozers, and tractors into the channel, locking the wheels and jumping free at the last second. Engine blocks cracked and hissed. Some Seabees wept. Ni-Vanuatu witnessing the destruction of wealth their island would never see again, at least in their lifetimes, thought the Americans had gone mad.¹

Million dollar point is about 10 minutes down the road and is the site of a massive water front dumping ground from the US forces after the Second World War. It is not clear what the circumstances were but the article above by Sacha Archibald has plenty of information and is worth reading if you want to know more.

It is fascinating seeing huge blocks of material, pipes, girders, coils, wheels and roofing stuck together and now being colonised by the coral. The picture above shows one coral plate draped over the metal frame like a table cloth.
In some places the coral growth after 65 years has been so strong that it is smothering the material.

Sometimes it is possible to see a motor or bulldozer track and sometimes it is just impossible to determine the origin. Some seem to sheets of roofing as for the Quonset hut now welded together
There are fish swimming about amongst the coral picking at bits and pieces which adds to the delight.

Publish Post

A mermaid explores

A bulldozer hovers upside down over the abyss and now is stuck fast.
Below various wagons, fork lift trucks and other motors appear out of the depths.
It is possible to see all these things snorkelling from the surface. At low tide one can stand on much of the debris and just look at the coral and fish through the goggles