Solomon Islands Mysteries: Accounts of Giants and UFOs in the Solomon Islands

By Marius Boirayon

Near where the sunken warships of the Battle of Guadalcanal lie, glowing UFOs rise out of the Pacific, fly into the mountains and disappear into jungle lakes. Here, a tropical paradise exists with inexplicable, ancient ruins and puzzling writings of an unknown culture. Steamy, rugged mountain ranges are inhabited by strange Sasquatch-like creatures. They have come down to the villages to kidnap the locals for generations. Terrifying stories of abduction and cannibalism are passed on by the villagers to their children. These are some of the incredible tales that the Solomon Islanders have lived with for decades and you will read about in this spellbinding book. Author Marius Boirayon is the son of the World War II central France maquis (resistance) leader, and grew up in Mount Hagen in the Papua New Guinea Highlands. Following a career in the Royal Australian Air Force and as an aircraft/helicopter engineer working in outback Australia, he decided in 1995 to go to the Solomon Islands to live.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adventures Unlimited Press
• Release date: Apr 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781935487128

Book preview

Errol.

CHAPTER ONE

A NEW LIFE

At the age of thirty-five, I was about as low down morally and spiritually in life as one could be. Mainly due to the loss of loves and my then rather adventurous wild nature, I had hit rock bottom and was emotionally broke, and could not see any future for myself in Australia anymore. How I got to that despondent stage of my life is an incredible story but, at the time, money was not a problem at all and I had been considering where in the world I might go.

I had been renting an up-market apartment at the seaside north of Brisbane and it was late one night, whilst contemplating where in the world to go, that I decided to peruse my old atlas. As I came to the Pacific Ocean page I found the Solomon Islands circled, with an arrow to writing that said: Here… The Thousand Islands! Sometime, while my mother was alive, she had done this. I knew right then and there, as if it were some kind of omen or sign, that a destiny lay in wait for me in the Solomon Islands.

Late one night, a few days later, I arrived at Henderson Airfield on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomons and was met by a courtesy bus from the pre-arranged hotel I was to stay at.

My adventure was soon to begin. At dawn the next morning, I went to turn on the tap to get some water, but nothing came out except lots of air and I was as thirsty as anything. After finding the same predicament applied to the rest of the hotel I walked out into the deserted town and down the main street, looking for somewhere to quench my thirst. It was at that moment that a black Toyota Camry taxi pulled up to me, with the driver asking me if I needed a lift. I hired this man and his taxi for the next month or more, at $100 Solomon a day. John became a good friend of mine over the years and we have had a lot of memorable times together. Indirectly, a few years ago and through my association with him, Big John was elected Chief of a section of the fearsome Solomon Islands’ Kwara’ae people of Malaita; this population, estimated at 30,000 strong, is in an area of the large, mountainous tropical jungle of that island.

During that month, Big John was a wealth of information about the country and its people, and I met many of them – more than most white men would normally. It was during this time that I also met my first Solomon wife, Miriam. I became quite fond of her. She was a petite, polite, well-spoken twenty-year-old, the eldest of a huge, respectable Malaitan family and I had proposed marriage to her; which, unsurprisingly, she accepted, as I was a really good guy, a white man and I had approached her father about the matter.

I had fallen in love with the country and the friendly nature of the people. It reminded me of the lucky childhood I had growing up in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. As a bonus, I could already speak near-fluent pidgin English and, because of my ability to speak this down-to-earth language, I found myself easily accepted and made many genuine friends and acquaintances, more quickly than other white men could at the time.

Head-over-heels about my new future in this most beautiful tropical island archipelago, I left Miriam with money to start organising our wedding and flew to Brisbane to pack a container with all my earthly possessions and other items I thought I might need.

A few weeks later, I flew back to the Solomon Islands with an Aussie mate of mine, whom I had sponsored to come over and be my best man. Within days of our arrival in the capital, Honiara, I rented a spacious, modern, high-set house upon the foothills over-looking Iron Bottom Sound. The sea view from the front verandah was breathtaking. Some weeks went by, during which I bought a four-door sedan motor vehicle. My container arrived a week before the wedding and, in the presence of a few dozen people, we were married by the sea in the garden of the old Parliament House, where we also had the reception.

While there were only a few dozen people at the ceremony, half-anhour later, at the reception, hundreds of guests arrived. In anticipation of this, I had gone all-out, hiring a reputable Chinese restaurant in Honiara to prepare the wedding feast.

What I didn’t know at the time was that, when a white man marries a Malaitan woman – and I happened to be the first to do so in a very long time – he marries the whole island. Some years later, that certainly proved to be true…

During the next few months, I sorted out my immigration status and obtained a two-year work permit, as there was so much opportunity for the establishment of any kind of business. My father-in-law secured this for me and Miriam settled into being a wife, with much support from her family and friends. It was not uncommon for me to return home to find half a tribe under the house. I always accepted this as normal practice and made no issue of it.

Among the possessions that arrived in my container was a new Yamaha WR500 2-stroke motocross bike, one of the few motorcycles in the Solomon Islands, and definitely the only one of its type there. On occasion, I would load fuel into my backpack, sling it on my shoulders and go dirt-bike riding, exploring Guadalcanal for the day or so. As I had a nice motorcycle for these adventures, and happened to be the first person to dirt-bike ride in Guadalcanal, I really cut loose over the next few months, going to many different places, east and west, as far as the island’s dirt roads could take me.

It was through one of these trail-rides that I met Joseph, who later became my good friend and joined me on expeditions and other sojourns, some mentioned in this book. He also taught me a lot about the existence of the giants of Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands, among other things.

As the months went by, a growing urge to explore the rest of the Solomon Islands came over me. I had become interested in the province of the Western Solomons, in particular Gizo, the main town of the New Georgia group of islands. Furthermore, I couldn’t see us living in Honiara for the rest of our lives, as I had a desire to move onto another kind of island lifestyle. With our possessions back in a container, we flew to Gizo, some 400 kilometres west.

Here, we experienced an enjoyable island lifestyle living in a charming, wooden semi-traditional house built on poles over the water, just outside the serene small waterside town. I had bought a 26-foot wooden dugout canoe with an outboard to get around and I explored many of the islands, eventually buying one. We lived there for several weeks before my fatherin-law demanded our return to Guadalcanal. This was merely due to the fact that we were too far away for him to bleed me of any more thousands of dollars a week until we got back!

I have deliberately made this first part of my stay in the Solomon Islands brief, so that we can get on with the true purpose of this book – the giants and UFOs of the Solomon Islands.

CHAPTER TWO

THE DRAGON-SNAKE

We had just returned from the New Georgia group of islands, where I had bought a beautiful tropical isle with white sand beaches and coconut palms, and were in desperate need of new rental accommodation in Guadalcanal. My best friend Joseph had been helping me find a house that was preferably outside the Honiara area. As there was a shortage of liveable housing, it had almost come to the point of taking what you could get.

During that week of searching around for something suitable, we found a house by the sea that was on an abandoned coca plantation. It was in need of some repair, but it was perfect for what I required. After investigating who was the owner of the property, I found out that it belonged to a government minister. At the time, I did think it was a little unusual that a minister who had an equivalent wage of $25,000 Australian a year could actually own such a big property. Nevertheless, we took the property’s caretaker along with us, to give us directions, and a couple of dozen of his hangers-on who were having a rowdy drinking party. Then we made our way back to Honiara, to the Honourable Minister’s government house.

This was a huge double-storey home with verandahs all the way around. We walked up the flight of stairs to where we eventually found the Honourable Minister lying on his rather large stomach doing a large, ABC wooden jigsaw and a dozen of his ‘hangers-on’ having a rowdy drinking party. As I had never met the gentleman before, I courteously introduced myself and told him of the purpose of me being there. With that, he simply looked up at me and then went back to concentrating on his jigsaw puzzle.

I was somewhat taken aback by his impoliteness and ignorance towards me. Joseph had noticed my embarrassment, and repeated again to him what I had said, in Guadalcanal language. The minister then replied back to Joseph that we had to wait until he had finished what he was doing, which Joseph relayed back to me. As he had only several more jigsaw pieces left to fit, and we had an important reason for being there, I decided to wait. The minister had deliberately made me wait so that he could spitefully display his power over the white man.

It was during those ten minutes, while I was standing at ease waiting for this honourable man to finish his ridiculously easy pre-school puzzle that I happened to notice, not only did the jigsaw have bold ABC letters, it also had a picture of an animal related to that specific letter. My patience began to grow thin when I saw the diffi culty he had in finding the position for the M’ piece, which by coincidence had a picture of a monkey on it. I felt like reaching over and slamming the rest of it together for him. Finally, with a big sigh of contentment at his achievement, he rolled off his stomach and sat himself down on a nearby bench. While husking a betel nut, he asked me what I wanted. I repeated my interest in the house to him once more. As if he had been chewing it over in his mind all his life, he told me that I could rent the house from him, but he would first need $6,000 from me to show some kind of a goodwill gesture. I responded with a reasonable question to him as to whether this money was for a security or bond on the house, however, without replying, he went over to speak to another man. When he returned with the man he had been talking to, he then cordially introduced him to me as another Honourable Minister, who would also require $6,000 if I was to rent the house.

Their preposterous behaviour had made me question whether they were serious or just plain audacious simpletons. Unfortunately, after weighing up everything, the answer I had to come up with was both. The more peculiar thing about it all was when I gracefully declined their extortionist offer; they looked at me as if I was the biggest bastard on the planet and then made a few comments in Guadalcanal as we were leaving. When we got into the car I asked Joseph what they had said, but he politely told me that it was not worth mentioning. So I was back to square one again…

This reminds me! Some months later, I was at the Mendana Hotel’s tropical bar waiting for someone to arrive, when I met a gentleman who told me he was being deported that afternoon, for the second time. Curious as to why this distinguished- looking businessman was being deported, I asked him to explain why.

This gentleman told me that he was the south-western Pacific representative for the World Bank, and that the Solomon Islands’ Government had invited him to come and discuss a second loan. He continued to tell me that he had queried the reason why they had not began to implement some of the basic guidelines laid down by the World Bank, when they got their first loan. These included such mere things as sustainable rainforest logging, tuna fishing, and a variety of government policy reforms. In doing so, the now-deceased Prime Minister told him that he had to get out of the country immediately and never come back. Casually, he raised his index finger and pointed over to where I saw two policemen standing. I never forgot the determined comment he made when I asked him whether the Solomons would be getting that second loan.

Not when I get back to Washington they won’t! he replied.

The Solomon Islands back then had a foreign debt in excess of a billion dollars and still growing. For a country that has boundless natural resources, they only survive by continuously holding out their hand to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other countries for foreign aid. All of the money received is, or was, never set aside for the good use of any future economic development. With the continual allegations of corruption within the government rife, and their inability to effectively manage the resources they own, it is a recipe for economic disaster. To me, this accounts for why so many Solomon Islanders had told me they wished it would return to something similar to colonial rule.

As Joseph and I were driving away from the dishonourable minister’s house, a feeling of despondency beset itself upon me. To top it all off , the continual jarring of the car hitting potholes had cracked a pipe in the air-conditioning system, and it was as hot as hell. After buying a few beers at a Chinese shop, we made our way to the beach to cool off and have a think. It was while we were sitting at the beach that Joseph told me of a house that he knew of at his village; he had thought it wouldn’t suit me because I was a white man. I told him to stop that kind of foolish thinking, and that we should go and have a look.

I knew of Joseph’s village, but I couldn’t place the house he had been describing to me, as we made the rough seventy-kilometre dirt-road journey westward along the coast from Honiara. Upon arriving at Cape Esperance, Joseph pointed to the quaint little three-bedroom timber house that was in the eastern extremity of the village. It had a cement floor and a galvanised iron roof with an outhouse near the grass-hut kitchen, and the most beautiful island sea view anyone could wish for. There was a tap and shower outside with perpetual mountain spring water. It didn’t bother me that there was no electricity, as I had a generator. I made my mind up to take the house; I didn’t have that many options left. While I was inspecting it, the divorced woman who owned the house arrived, and I formalised an agreement to move in the next day.

Late the next afternoon, we arrived at the house with all our possessions on the back of a six-ton truck and unloaded them into the house. This had attracted the attention of a good portion of the people of the village, as I was the only white man to have ever come to live in the area.

I had to keep a most watchful eye on my Australian blue heeler pup, as he had a tendency to bite anyone he didn’t know. On more than a few occasions, I had to pay out compensation for this untrainable behaviour. I had brought this pup along with me when I came back from Australia, and he was much sought after for breeding purposes, as he was the only one of his type in the Solomon Islands.

That night, after placing a few fluorescent lights around the house, I started up the generator and sat back with Joseph and a few new friends to relax and have a beer. Miriam had not liked the idea of shifting to a village populated predominately by Guadalcanal people. Later that night, while we were having a few beers, and I was finding out a little more about the area, Joseph told me I had to watch out for the Dragon-Snake that was in the area.

Dragon-Snake! What #****# Dragon-Snake? Just to hear the name of it sent a shiver down my spine. They then all began to tell me that this creature came out of the mountains at night and flew around. Everyone in the whole area had feared this so-called Dragon-Snake for generations, as it had piercing red eyes that killed people and had been responsible for people going missing. What next! All I wanted to do was relax and do some fishing in a nice peaceful tropical environment. Now, I had to contend with some mythological Dragon-Snake. I thought no more of it, and put it down to one of their superstitions again, of which there seemed to be plenty.

Out from the beach, in front of the house, was a small reef, and I had been eager to try my hand at a bit of spear-fishing. While Miriam was sorting out the contents of the house, I decided to have a go. Putting on my goggles, snorkel and flippers, I entered the water with the intention of spearing some lunch, while taking my five-pronged Hawaiian sling along for the deed. It was just like I had seen in all the diving magazines: crystal-clear waters inhabited by hundreds of different species of tropical fish. However, I did find it a little more diffi cult to spear the fish than I had first anticipated. It was as if all the fish had ESP. Just as I released the spear, they would all scatter in different directions. To add to my frustration, all the children who were swimming around with me were getting heaps. After an hour of these continual near misses, I decided to abandon my quest for lunch, and open a can and get home instead.

As I approached the beach, I saw a school of trevally swim past. With my Hawaiian sling already loaded, I turned around to follow them and accidentally let the spear release, which then embedded two of its prongs into my left-hand middle ring finger. The pain was excruciating! After realising what I had done, I left the water, while calling out to Miriam. With blood all over the lounge-room table, we tried to cut them free, but I soon realised that it was a job for the hospital. Fortunately, there was a doctor at the Honiara hospital that day, as it was a Sunday. Actually, you could count yourself lucky if you found a doctor at anytime. Consequently, I never made another attempt to ever go spear-fishing again, and restricted my fishing activities to fishing line only.

A few days went by and things started to settle down a little. I had become quite an enthusiastic fisherman with my fishing rod, and had been pulling scores of beautiful reef fish. However, Joseph was renowned by all in the village as being the best spear-fisherman and he had decided to do some night fishing, as it was easy to spear-fish at night by torchlight. I decided that, while he was using his spear, I would throw some lines in and see what kind of fish I got. Ci-Ci, another good friend of mine, and I were cleaning fish when Joseph came out of the water with his dugout canoe full of fish to add to our already large pile. While we were inspecting his catch, he suddenly shouted for our attention.

There! There! There! The Dragon-Snake! The Dragon-Snake! he cried, while pointing to the right. As I looked down the beach, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. About a kilometre away, there was a very bright luminous white object flying slowly over the water. I remember asking myself whether I was really seeing it. I called out for Miriam to bring my binoculars.

After focusing in on the star-like, brilliantly lit object, I noticed that it was about 60-foot round and appeared to make no noise. We watched it for a couple of minutes until it submerged itself in the sea. Joseph told me to just wait for about ten minutes and I’d see it come back out again – which it did! When it rose out of the water, it was glowing twice as brightly as when it first went in. We continued to watch it with my binoculars as it returned back to the coast in the same direction as it came and disappeared out of sight over the top of the coconut trees. Somewhat startled by this experience, we went back into the house and sat talking about this so-called Dragon-Snake until the early hours of the morning.

Joseph and Ci-Ci told me that if you didn’t see it one night, then you were quite likely to see it the next. They were right again! In fact, over a seven-month period, I began to lose count of these sightings when they reached the sixty mark. While we sat talking, I began to explain to Joseph and Ci-Ci the structure of the universe. I showed them space-type pictures from my Time Life book The Universe and explained that these so-called Dragon-Snakes were not what they really thought they were, but were what the white man called Unidentified Flying Objects. They were absolutely amazed, as they had spent all their lives fearing them, due to superstition and no real understanding. And for that matter, so did I.

This sighting was the first of well over sixty more which followed, during which I investigated the UFO waterfall-lake base in north-west Guadalcanal, central-east Malaita and central Small Malaita. This first sighting, though, had also completely changed my mind about the existence of extraterrestrials, UFOs and such, as a little investigation did reveal that this so-called Dragon-Snake had been in the area for well over a century. I seriously began thinking in terms of extraterrestrials inhabiting our planet.

My extensive investigations into the presence of the subterranean species unknown to modern man, underneath Guadalcanal and Malaita, has revealed that these sometimes hidden-to-the-eye subterrestrials have displayed totally unacceptable, unfriendly behaviour towards Guadalcanal and Malaitan people. Indeed, this includes several outright murders and abductions. Because of this, they cannot ever be considered as friendly, and later in this book I explain the reason why. But briefly, as an example: a good friend of mine’s grandfather was incinerated by one of these balls-of-light UFOs in the early 1900s. Dozens of independent sources have verified this. An account of this, plus quite a few more of these kinds of horrific events, can be found recorded in this book.

In the next two weeks, I saw the UFO three more times, going to the same place as it had when I first saw it. This had made me question myself several times as to what I was actually seeing. It also raised a few more troubling questions. What was so interesting for the UFO under the sea, and where did it go when it wasn’t flying around?

The sea in front of the village was where the Allied Forces encountered a Japanese fleet in a great naval battle that resulted in the biggest loss of allied ships during any naval engagement in World War II. This included Australia’s heavy cruiser the HMAS Canberra, and the American heavy cruiser USS Chicago. I won’t go into the sad details of how they were lost, but it was all a tragedy and many men lost their lives. Actually, it would be a really good idea if someone went and did a documentary about those submersibles, like they did with the Titanic; then travelled to a place a few miles away, to 7,000 feet deep, north-west of those wrecks, and hung around for awhile.

A few days later, Joseph and I went to Honiara to get a twentythree-foot fibreglass boat and engine. While we were there, I went to the Historical Archives to look up some information on where these ships had actually sunk. Much to my surprise, I learnt that the UFOs were submerging in the exact area where the HMAS Canberra and USS Chicago and others had sunk. This exact same positioning was not a mere coincidence, or at least I didn’t think so. At that time, I did not know that there were more than one of these things flying around and that they could travel quite well under the sea.

Also, at the time, why this UFO had so much of an interest in these old warships became somewhat of a baffling problem to me. I do remember speculating about any of the remaining gunpowder, but questioned myself as to why these aliens would have a need for it. Somewhat curious as to all these perplexing going-ons and mysteries, while still trying to maintain some form of sanity, an ingenious plan came to mind. And so I went to the nearby Department of Lands, and purchased a 1: 25,000 topographical map of north-west Guadalcanal. Meanwhile, Joseph’s wife had given birth to a little boy, whom Joseph had named after me. This was their tenth child. For a couple that were in their late twenties, I thought this to be a remarkable achievement.

The child’s christening was to be held the following Sunday. It was Joseph’s normal job to hold the Sunday mass at the village church. Lord knows why! Joseph was the biggest rascal of them all. I did attend one of his Sunday morning church sessions, but found it difficult to stay. On this particular occasion, there were five babies to be christened and so a white Catholic priest from Honiara had been booked and was going to perform the ceremony. I had bought two pigs from the Honiara abattoir especially for this event, and had sent an invitation out for these two old chiefs from the area to come to my house for the feast, to be held on the grass outside my house.

The christening ceremony went ahead as planned. The pigs had been butchered and were cooking away in the hot stone oven when the two old chiefs and

Reviews for Solomon Islands Mysteries

[victory · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not horrible but wouldn't pay more than ten bucks for needs a lot more documentation.