In 1971 the Team was deployed to Papua New Guinea for three months, the two major tasks being the investigation and removal of an underwater bomb dump in Madang and the removal of a major portion of a wreck in Binnen Harbour, Madang, which was a navigational hazard. The diving support vessel was to be MWL 256 based at HMAS TARANGAU and after loading all stores and embarking the Team, we cast off for Madang, a 30 hour passage.

On arrival, the Team settled into shore accommodation and carried out searches on the two sites to establish their exact location. The bomb dump site proved to be quite close to habitation and just across the road from the RSL Club. The diving site was extremely steep with bombs being located from between 25 and 200 feet on at 55 degree slope. The wreck in Binnen Harbour was located in 66 feet of water and was that of HMAS TERKA an auxiliary minesweeper that sank on 26 March, 1945, after bunkering from the coal hulk RONA. (RONA was formerly the 3 masted iron barque POLLY WOODSIDE now a maritime museum in Melbourne). The requirement was to reduce the wreck's height so that 40 feet of water was available over her to allow safe navigation of oil tankers in the channel to discharge their cargoes.

After laying a mooring approximately 150 feet from shore off RSL Park, a locally hired vessel, MV SEA LARK was moored over the dump with her stern some 15 feet from shore. Recovery of the bombs was achieved by divers, operating from a dinghy alongside SEA LARK, placing rope slings around each bomb and then hooking on to a recovery line leading to SEA LARK's winch. The work was by no means easy as a large number of bombs had to be prised from coral that had grown around them and handling such heavy weights underwater on a sometimes vertical gradient was not simple to say the least. The recovered ordnance was placed on deck and kept hosed down as some bomb cases had deteriorated and were exuding their explosive filling which if allowed to dry out would not have been good! As deck space filled, the bombs were transferred to the MWL and taken to very deep water, over 500 fathoms, and dumped. In all, 320 bombs, ranging from 250lb to 1000lb, with a total weight of 71.5 tons were recovered over the period 6 May to 3 June. To finalize the job, special Naval Board permission was obtained to exceed the then current diving limitations on air and a survey dive to 240 feet was carried out. Only 2 small size bombs were found that had been lost from shallower depths on the steep slope during recovery and had rolled to the bottom. They were assessed as posing no risk and left there. As diving at that depth was approaching the limits for air as a breathing medium, the survey duration was short; for something like 5 minutes on the bottom, from memory, 15 to 20 minutes was spent decompressing.

Work on the demolition of HMAS TERKA began a few days before the bomb dump task with part of the Team, so that the maximum workload could be achieved in the time available. Demolition was by explosive means and once a shot had been fired there was no visibility for the rest of the day due to a combination of coal dust and mud in suspension in the water. This allowed divers to rejoin the team members working on the bomb dump, thus progressing both jobs as convenient and having regard to weather conditions. This task was successfully concluded on 2 June, with a minimum of 40 feet of water over what remained of the wreck.