And rather than former wartime sites now rehabilitated to their pre-war status, participants will find themselves amongst a living museum of the 1940s, one of beached and sunken warships, amphibious landing craft and wrecked planes, hillside foxholes and barbed-wire entanglements, gun emplacements, old aircraft control towers, an underground radio communications centre….
Put together by leading Australian war historian Mat McLachlan and guided by historian and enthusiast John Innes who has lived on Guadalcanal for fifteen years and has led prime ministers and presidents around these battlefields, the 7-night tour begins on August 5 to be in Guadalcanal on August 7 – the 69th anniversary of the day American forces attacked the Japanese occupying Guadalcanal, and marking America's entry into the war in the Pacific.
Price starts from $3197pp twin-share including first-class hotel, excursions, entry fees, breakfast and lunch daily, two dinners, tips and site educational pamphlets; air travel is addtional. Details 1300 880 340 or www.battlefields.com.au
HIGHLIGHTS include Alligator Creek, Bloody Ridge, Henderson Field, Mt Austen and Tulagi battlefields, Iron Bottom Sound, a memorial service and wreath-laying over the sunken HMAS Canberra on which 193 Australian servicemen died, entry to the Dedication of a new Coastwatchers Memorial, the Vilu Outdoor War Museum's war planes, guns and other relics, and Kamimbo Bay from where the Japanese fled Guadalcanal in February 1943.
