REVIEW: Story of Rabaul eruptions has lessons for wider Pacific

Review of Return to Volcano Town: Reassessing the 1937-43 volcanic eruptions at Rabaul, by R. Wally Johnson and Neville Threlfall (editors)

Abstract

Return to Volcano Town: Reassessing the 1937-43 volcanic eruptions at Rabaul, by R. Wally Johnson and Neville Threlfall (editors). Canberra: ANU Press, 2023. 410 pages, ISBN 9781760466039.

EARLY one morning in 1953 my father and kiap David Hook set out from Popondetta to climb Mount Lamington in what was then the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. Mount Lamington had exploded in January 1951, the largest eruption on January 21 releasing a pyroclastic flow that roared down the mountain and killed an estimated 3000 people. The carriers working with my father and the patrol officer abandoned them as the approached the mountain and it was towards the end of the day that my father came home, his boots cut to ribbons by the volcanic rock, his clothes ragged and soaked in sweat and his pockets full of colour slide film.