Foreign minister Bob Carr has hailed a decade of peace in the Solomon Islands as a "textbook" peacekeeping mission.
Leaders from across the Pacific have celebrated this week the achievement of the Australian-led regional assistance mission called RAMSI.
A brutal ethnic conflict known as the "tensions" ended virtually overnight when Australian troops landed on the 24th of July in 2003.
It has cost Australia more than $2 billion over 10 years and the military force is now pulling out.
The hope is peace will endure but Solomon Islanders say the causes of the conflict have still not been resolved.
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Gordan Darcy Lilo thanked presidents, prime ministers and dignitaries at a ceremony in in the capital, Honiara.
"Let me say thank-you to the governments and people of Australia and New Zealand. Let me also say thank-you the to the governments and people of the Pacific Island forum countries. You could have chosen to put your resources into other priorities but you chose us," Mr Lilo said.
A decade ago, armed militants ruled the streets of Honiara and the government had all but collapsed
The country was labelled a failed state on Australia's doorstop.
Five years of ethnic conflict over land in this poverty-stricken former British colony of 600,000 people left about 200 dead and 20,000 displaced.
Since the military mission landed in 2003, the government has been rebuilt and the economy has grown by more than 60 per cent.
Senator Bob Carr says it was $2 billion well spent.
"I think were looking at a textbook example of peace building: a regional effort led by Australia proudly, law and order restored, militias disbanded, a proper police force built up, an 4000 weapons confiscated," he said.
The mission was not on easy one. Two Australians died, one shot in the back.
Mistakes were also made, including the 2006, post-election riot that saw Chinatown burnt to the ground.
A Solomon Islands government inquiry blamed it on the actions of the Australian Federal Police.
Then there was the Julian Moti child sex case which saw Australia plunged into a diplomatic crisis with not just the Solomon Islands but also Papua New Guinea.
The case was thrown out by the Australian High Court which ruled Mr Moti's extradition from the Solomons to Brisbane by the Australian Federal Police was illegal.
But RAMSI co-ordinator Nicholas Coppel believes the gains outweighed the failings.
"I'm amazed more mistakes haven't been made really, with the human agents involved over a 10-year period, and often under very difficult circumstances," Mr Coppel said.
The Australian-led military force, that has seen 8000 personnel serve in the country, is now pulling out but RAMSI is not finished yet.
The federal government has allocated another half-billion dollars over four years to the mission, which includes keeping about 100 well-armed Australian Federal Police in the country.
While Solomon islanders welcome the peace RAMSI brought, there are concerns the underlying causes have not been resolved.
"RAMSI came to Solomon Islands to bring law and order back but it does not fully address the whole issue of the conflict, especially in terms of the land issue," said Stephen Panga, the premier of Guadalcanal Province, where most of the fighting took place.
Dealing the land issue was not an objective of the RAMSI mission.
During the decade it has been in the country, the Solomon Islands government has made little progress on that.
There also been no national reconciliation, a requirement in Solomons traditional culture for warring parties to move on.
Prime minister Gordon Darcy Lilo says suggestions this might lead to a return to the "tensions" is the work of a few trouble makers.
Mr Lilo admits though that his government still has a lot of work to do.
"The real test of RAMSI is still to come and the real test of RAMSI is what we do after it has left, that is, do we hold together as a nation or crumble once again into individual microcosms," he said.
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