Kokopo / Rabaul (Varzin plantation)

Township in East New Britain, captured by Japanese forces in January 1942. From a POW camp at Rabaul, more than 1,050 Australian prisoners and civilians — including Peter Garrett's grandfather Tom Vernon Garrett, copra and cocoa planter at Varzin near Kokopo — were embarked on the Montevideo Maru bound for Hainan. The ship was torpedoed by USS Sturgeon on 1 July 1942 in the South China Sea, with no survivors. "In the Valley" opens with this loss: "My grandfather went down with the Montevideo / The rising sun sent him floating to his rest".