A little more on the bird connection. The naval base is still
HMPNGS Tarangau, although the geographical name is ‘Lombrum’, also the address of the nearby (former) detention centre. On nautical charts the adjacent sea area is ‘See-adler Harbour’, the White-tailed Eagle of Europe being the original ‘see-adler’
to German speakers. ‘See-adler’ has been the name of various German naval vessels, and curiously is the name of a current PNG patrol boat. The Australian naval base was opened in 1950 as
HMAS See-adler, replacing a base on the NG mainland of that name, at Dregerhafen, now better known as the site of a large secondary school. Soon after the Manus base was re-named
HMAS Tarangau.
Strictly, while the base and detention centre and airfield are AT Manus, or in Manus Province, they are not ON Manus, Los Negros Island being separated from Manus Island by a narrow finger of sea but connected by a bridge.
From: Geoffrey Dabb <>
Sent: Monday, 19 November 2018 8:42 AM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] Flight of the Sea-Eagle
So the word Manus is again on everyone’s lips with the news PNG, the US and Australia are to develop the naval base. I first heard of the place in, I think, 1951or 1954 at an election meeting in West Geelong town hall
addressed by Robert Menzies. Menzies was still complaining that the Labor government had refused to accept a fully developed base there from the US at the end of WW2. I remember this because of the following exchange:
Menzies: And Manus went back to the jungle!
Interjector: Why don’t you?!
I have visited the naval station when it was under Australian administration, the relevance for present purposes being that it was named
HMAS Tarangau, ‘tarangau’ being the White-bellied Sea-Eagle in Melanesian pidgin. The tarangau emblem was (perhaps still is) prominently displayed at the base. This is one of our own local species, indeed one recorded in the 2016-2017 Garden Bird Survey
with a recording rate of 0.04. You will all know that the Bald Eagle emblem of the USA also depicts a sea-eagle, a relatively common bird around Washington DC.
You will probably not find Manus covered in most books on ‘New Guinea’ birds. However I might add that according to
The Birds of Northern Melanesia (Mayr E & Diamond J, 2001) Manus has 50 resident land and freshwater bird species with an ‘endemism index’ of 0.72.
