Dollars!

One Hundred Million Dollars!

Estimated Value of War Stuff Dumped in N. Hebrides

MOST people have heard of Manus, and how the Chifley- Evatt Government of Australia re fused to deal with the Uuited States Government, after the war, so that that huge base, and the almost price less equipment it contained, was either sold for a song to the Chinese, or pushed into the sea, or destroyed.

Now we have the even more fan tastic story of Luganville, in Santo, New Hebrides. The Evatt-Chifley Government is not the only one which can be described in the light of after-events as a hairy goat. The New Hebrides Administration also deserves the appellation.

At Luganville, on Santo, the Americans built up one of the big gest machinery and vehicle parks in the Pacific. In this elaborately equipped rear base they had 10,000 technical troops, miles of buildings and stores, seven telephone ex changes, four hospitals, foundries, workshops, cinemas, power-stations— everything.

When the war was over, they valued it low and, according to Osmar White, who investigated the thing for Melbourne Herald, they offered it to the NH Administration for 8 cents in the Dollar. The French-British government hummed and hawed, and argued.

The Americans lost patience. They built a ramp on Million Dollar Point (east coast of Santo) whereby to push stuff over into the sea, and they used a fleet of ships to take heavier equipment for dumping further out.

Thus they destroyed plant and equip ment perhaps worth 100 million dollars; —enough to have put back bone into the economy of all the islands in the SW Pacific. Osmar White says it included:— Hundreds of brand-new jeeps, tractors, trucks, graders, power shovels, generators, mobile laundries and cookhouses; thousands of crates of radio and electrical equipment, machine tools and parts, engines, dockyard and aerodrome equipment.

Now, several years after the tragedy, Mr. S. Goodwin, of Manly, Sydney, and his Salvage Exporting Co., are completing arrangements with the NH Administration under which, on a royalty basis, they will go to Santo in July or August, and try to salvage a lot of this stuff.

They will have to use a big staff and

expensive equipment, but they have an enormous field to work on. At Million Dollar Point, and within three miles thereof, there is 100 million dollars’ worth of machinery, etc., plus the remains of an American battleship, President Coolidge, 17,500 tons, which was sunk there.

Experience has shown that, if such machinery is sunk deep enough—at least 150 feet—it may stay immersed in salt water for a long time without corrosion. The Salvage Co., with luck, could reap a rich harvest. And the NH Government, which could have had the lot in 1946 for some thing like a bagatelle, now will meekly accept a royalty on the value of the stuff recovered.