Commando Edition 17 2023

COMMANDO AND SPECIAL OPERATIONS
MEMORIALS
Coastwatchers Memorial
Kalibobo Point, Madang
Papua New Guinea
Description
The Coastwatchers Memorial light at Madang
Harbour. The light is a memorial to the Coastwatchers
still living and to those thirty-eight who paid the
supreme sacrifice while carrying out their solitary and
dangerous work during the second world war, and the
loyal natives who made it possible for them to remain
at their posts.
The PNG lighthouse was the idea of the RAN’s
brilliant Director of Naval Intelligence during the
Second World War, Commander Rupert Long. It was
built from many individual donations, including from
Vice President Richard Nixon, Fleet Admiral ‘Bull’
Halsey, and Vice Admiral Sir John Collins.
Shaped like a rocket or a bomb, the eighty feet high
reinforced concrete column has an attractive base
surround and a cruciform pathway approach. This
Memorial Lighthouse was also designed to be a
practical navigational aid with provision for the
installation of a powerful one million candlepower
beam that would be visible up to ten miles out to sea.
Part of the inscription on one of three dedication plates
reads:
‘In honour and grateful memory of the
Coastwatchers and of the loyal natives who assisted
them in their heroic service behind enemy lines
during the Second World War in providing
intelligence vital to the conduct of Allied
operations. Not only did the Coastwatchers
transmit by means of teleradio from their jungle
hideouts information which led to the sinking of
numerous enemy warships, but they were able to
give timely warning of impending enemy air attacks.
The contribution towards the Allied victory in the
Pacific by a small body of men 1 who constituted the
Coastwatchers was out of all proportion to their
numbers.’
https://www.whiteint.com.au/led-lighting/coast/torches
1
This is not quite correct as there was one female Coast watcher Third
Officer Ruby Boye.
Edited by Doug Knight
Third Officer Ruby Boye. The only woman Coastwatcher.
Source: https://www.navy.gov.au/media-room/publications/semaphore-07-17
The light was officially switched on for the first time
on 15 August 1959 by Senator John Gorton, Minister
for the Navy, in the presence of Brigadier d. M.
Cleland, Administrator of Papua New Guinea,
Commander E. Feldt, who organised and expanded
the organisation, Captain C. M. White, US Naval
Attache in Australia, other officials and local residents,
and an estimated 3,000 locals.
History
The Coastwatching Organisation, created and
administered by the Royal Australian Navy, operated in
the island’s north and north-east of Australia from the
earliest days of the war in the Pacific in the Second
World War. Civilians and military personnel, who
continued their work in enemy held territory through -
out the war, staffed this organisation at extreme risk to
themselves and those native people who assisted
them. The Coastwatchers monitored Japanese ship,
air, and troop movements, and would then relay this
information to their own commands.
Coastwatchers made the first sighting of Japanese
forces by identifying large flying boats off Madang in
December 1941. The names of those who gave their
lives are engraved in a memorial around the base of
the lighthouse.
The man who was to do so much to ensure the
success of the Coastwatcher concept, Eric Feldt, began
his career as one of the first term cadets to enter the
newly established Royal Australian Naval College at
48 COMMANDO ~ The Magazine of the Australian Commando Association ~ Edition 17 I 2023