Papua New Guinea: land of Wigmen, giant butterflies and torrid wartime tales
On Saturday the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall arrive in Papua New Guinea, an exuberant island that’s getting easier for tourists to explore
Visitors to PNG can expect feisty indigenous tribes, flamboyant bird life, superb diving, remote jungle lodges and golden beaches Photo: ALAMY
"In Tari around half the people
still live in traditional village style with separate huts for men and
women" Photo: NIGEL TISDALL
11:51AM GMT 02 Nov 2012
How can it be that the world’s second-largest island is so little known to
travellers? Moored off the north coast of Australia, New Guinea seems to offer
everything you could want for an exotic holiday – feisty indigenous tribes,
flamboyant bird life, superb diving, remote jungle lodges and golden beaches
with ice-cold South Pacific beer…
The place was carved up in the colonial era between the Dutch, Germans and
British; one half is now the Indonesian state of West Papua, while the east
forms the bulk of Papua New Guinea, formerly an Australian-administered
territory and today a loyal Commonwealth member. Independence came in 1975, with
a ceremony attended by a young Charles, Prince of Wales, who was billed in the
local pidgin language as “nambawan pikinini bilong Misis Kwin”.
This weekend the Prince will pay a return visit to PNG, as it is known,
bringing some much-deserved attention to a country still considered a byword for
all things remote. In reality, it is easy enough to fly into its isolated
capital, Port Moresby, via Singapore. Once an adventure playground known only to
birdwatchers, and explorers such as Benedict Allen, who underwent the painful
initiation ceremonies of its crocodile-worshipping cults, PNG is at last gaining
a place on the holiday map. In January its government opened a British tourist
office, and a growing number of tour operators are offering packages to a “last
frontier” and a place “untouched by time”.
Such descriptions seem justified as I fly north-west in a beaten-up twin-prop
plane to the Highlands town of Tari, watching the turquoise waters of the Coral
Sea give way to a switchback of ridges and valleys blanketed with dense green
tropical forest. Until the Thirties, few outsiders had any inkling that PNG’s
mountainous interior might be populated. Then an Australian gold prospector,
Mick Leahy, scaled its forbidding heights and found a million people living in a
Stone Age world of banana-leaf loincloths, feathered headdresses and deadly bows
and arrows.
Equally remarkable is the fact that Leahy’s expedition took along a 16mm
camera to record an adventure (now available on DVD) in which the white men were
seen as returning spirits who never defecated (as their bottoms were covered)
and who presumably kept their wives in their rucksacks. The most hostile
reception came around Tari, and this region still has a lawless mood. Alcohol is
banned, many men carry a machete, and most vehicles have wire grilles over their
windows. Armed hold-ups, inter-clan feuds and roadside flare-ups are a fact of
life.
Fortunately, there are seasoned ground handlers to whisk the wide-eyed visitor off to a hillside sanctuary like Ambua Lodge, part of a well-established collection of adventurously placed hotels run by Trans Niugini Tours, which also operates charter aircraft so guests can avoid the delays and cancellations that are a common hazard of using local airlines. All this can make a holiday to PNG expensive, and accommodation described as “luxury” is probably better read as “best available”. In return, visitors get to plunge into an extraordinary country where exuberant natural wonders, including the world’s largest butterfly and 38 species of birds of paradise, come paired with a society that boasts more than 800 languages and which is now fast-forwarding from Stone Age to Digital in the space of a generation.
In Tari around half the people still live in traditional village style with separate huts for men and women, the latter sporting bare breasts and grass skirts that get swapped for second-hand Western clothes when it’s time to go into town. New roads, and the construction of a colossal liquefied natural gas pipeline are the latest catalysts in the steady erosion of an age-old, self-sufficient culture.
“The most important things for the Highlander,” my guide explains, “are land, pigs and women”, in that order. And, for some men, hairdos. A visit to the Huli Wigmen, who spend 18 months growing their hair to make bushy wigs to sell, provides an entertaining introduction to a local talent for self-decoration that reaches its apogee in the “sing-sings” (festivals) in which clans gather for sell-out shows in towns such as Goroka and Mt Hagen. At other times, smaller presentations are staged for visitors that have an engaging authenticity reflected in the sweet reek of marijuana and innocent questions such as “Does England have the sea?”
Seventy per cent of PNG is covered with tropical forest, and while flying over its broccoli-like mountains and sinuous, caramel-hued rivers makes a thrilling sight, it is even better to get deep inside it. I do this the hard way by hiking a section of the Kokoda Track, a famous 60-mile trek that yomps over the Owen Stanley mountain range. In 1942 Japanese forces tried to capture Port Moresby, the final obstacle to invading Australia, by taking this audacious route. Twenty thousand troops were sent into the hills, only to be defeated by a combination of Aussie guts, overstretched supply lines and an unforgiving terrain. The story of this horrific “kill or be killed” micro-war is well told in numerous books, and 70 years on many Australians walk the Kokoda as an act of remembrance.
The full one-way trip, backed up with guides and porters, takes around eight days, climbing as high as 7,185ft, with swamps and torrential rain guaranteed. I opt for a two-night Kokoda Track “taster” walking from Owers’ Corner to a valley beyond Imita Ridge, where the Australians made their last stand. One soldier described the track as “a slimy ooze of stinking death”, and it remains an ordeal of squelching mud, slippery tree roots and arduous climbs in baking heat. For me the low point is not its endless, sweaty slog, but the misery of eating freeze-dried rations, washed down with river water flavoured with chorine-laced purification tablets. But who dares grumble, when you read of struggles like that of Corporal John Metson, who was shot in both ankles and spent three weeks crawling towards safety, only to be bayoneted by a Japanese patrol?
And it’s not all toil. At key points, gorgeous butterflies flutter by offering silent encouragement, while at night the forest is lit with fireflies. Then the Papuan porters, descendants of the “Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels” who supported the troops, gather around the camp fire with ukuleles to form a pocket-sized choir singing songs in pidgin to a backing track of frogs and crickets.
After all that, one has every right to seek out the more classic joys of a South Pacific holiday. A 100-minute flight north across the Solomon Sea lies New Britain, one in a gaggle of tropical islands curling around the north-east coast of New Guinea that offer quiet beaches, sensational diving and lazy days in unassuming hotels serving freshly caught snapper under the stars.
After the tension of Port Moresby, with its razor-wire fences and polluted rivers, the mood is wondrously clean and calm, with a coastline of bright blue waters and huge plantations of coconuts and cocoa. My goal is Rabaul, which sits on the edge of a massive caldera pimpled with six younger volcanoes, three of which are active. The most recent eruption was in 1994 when Mt Tavurvur wiped out the town, save for one lone hotel. Just like the frangipani trees that came bursting through the ash, so life sprang up again farther east at Kokopo, an easy-going seaside town where the Kokopo Beach Bungalow Resort makes a charming stop, with restful wooden rooms and coloured lights in the trees.
The war left its mark here too, and you can visit grim underground tunnels built by the Japanese with Indian slave labour to hide their barges from Allied raids. There are more than 60 wrecked warships for divers to explore, while at Tavui Point the edge of the reef is so close to the shore it was used a quayside for submarines. As you snorkel here in clear, bath-warm water, the coral looks as cheery and colourful as a children’s nursery, then everything suddenly drops away in a 250ft underwater cliff pulsating with fish.
A similar thrill comes when I encounter the hot, bubbling waters of the desolate volcanic landscape that surrounds Mt Tavurvur. “I’ll guide you to the crater edge for 50 kina [£15],” says Julius, who emerges from the wasteland like a messiah in flip-flops, his lips bright red from chewing betel nut. In his hand is a bag of megapode eggs, harvested from the nests these birds bury six feet under the ash.
It’s a long, hot, 45-minute climb to the edge of the abyss, like a step-aerobics class devised by the devil. “We won’t stay long,” Julius cautions, “as there’s a danger of landslides and quicksand.” Judging from the plumes of smoke rising from the crater, there is also the possibility that it could blow up at any moment. But that’s how it goes in Papua New Guinea, where the world still feels raw and untamed, and an adventure is guaranteed.
Fortunately, there are seasoned ground handlers to whisk the wide-eyed visitor off to a hillside sanctuary like Ambua Lodge, part of a well-established collection of adventurously placed hotels run by Trans Niugini Tours, which also operates charter aircraft so guests can avoid the delays and cancellations that are a common hazard of using local airlines. All this can make a holiday to PNG expensive, and accommodation described as “luxury” is probably better read as “best available”. In return, visitors get to plunge into an extraordinary country where exuberant natural wonders, including the world’s largest butterfly and 38 species of birds of paradise, come paired with a society that boasts more than 800 languages and which is now fast-forwarding from Stone Age to Digital in the space of a generation.
In Tari around half the people still live in traditional village style with separate huts for men and women, the latter sporting bare breasts and grass skirts that get swapped for second-hand Western clothes when it’s time to go into town. New roads, and the construction of a colossal liquefied natural gas pipeline are the latest catalysts in the steady erosion of an age-old, self-sufficient culture.
“The most important things for the Highlander,” my guide explains, “are land, pigs and women”, in that order. And, for some men, hairdos. A visit to the Huli Wigmen, who spend 18 months growing their hair to make bushy wigs to sell, provides an entertaining introduction to a local talent for self-decoration that reaches its apogee in the “sing-sings” (festivals) in which clans gather for sell-out shows in towns such as Goroka and Mt Hagen. At other times, smaller presentations are staged for visitors that have an engaging authenticity reflected in the sweet reek of marijuana and innocent questions such as “Does England have the sea?”
Seventy per cent of PNG is covered with tropical forest, and while flying over its broccoli-like mountains and sinuous, caramel-hued rivers makes a thrilling sight, it is even better to get deep inside it. I do this the hard way by hiking a section of the Kokoda Track, a famous 60-mile trek that yomps over the Owen Stanley mountain range. In 1942 Japanese forces tried to capture Port Moresby, the final obstacle to invading Australia, by taking this audacious route. Twenty thousand troops were sent into the hills, only to be defeated by a combination of Aussie guts, overstretched supply lines and an unforgiving terrain. The story of this horrific “kill or be killed” micro-war is well told in numerous books, and 70 years on many Australians walk the Kokoda as an act of remembrance.
The full one-way trip, backed up with guides and porters, takes around eight days, climbing as high as 7,185ft, with swamps and torrential rain guaranteed. I opt for a two-night Kokoda Track “taster” walking from Owers’ Corner to a valley beyond Imita Ridge, where the Australians made their last stand. One soldier described the track as “a slimy ooze of stinking death”, and it remains an ordeal of squelching mud, slippery tree roots and arduous climbs in baking heat. For me the low point is not its endless, sweaty slog, but the misery of eating freeze-dried rations, washed down with river water flavoured with chorine-laced purification tablets. But who dares grumble, when you read of struggles like that of Corporal John Metson, who was shot in both ankles and spent three weeks crawling towards safety, only to be bayoneted by a Japanese patrol?
And it’s not all toil. At key points, gorgeous butterflies flutter by offering silent encouragement, while at night the forest is lit with fireflies. Then the Papuan porters, descendants of the “Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels” who supported the troops, gather around the camp fire with ukuleles to form a pocket-sized choir singing songs in pidgin to a backing track of frogs and crickets.
After all that, one has every right to seek out the more classic joys of a South Pacific holiday. A 100-minute flight north across the Solomon Sea lies New Britain, one in a gaggle of tropical islands curling around the north-east coast of New Guinea that offer quiet beaches, sensational diving and lazy days in unassuming hotels serving freshly caught snapper under the stars.
After the tension of Port Moresby, with its razor-wire fences and polluted rivers, the mood is wondrously clean and calm, with a coastline of bright blue waters and huge plantations of coconuts and cocoa. My goal is Rabaul, which sits on the edge of a massive caldera pimpled with six younger volcanoes, three of which are active. The most recent eruption was in 1994 when Mt Tavurvur wiped out the town, save for one lone hotel. Just like the frangipani trees that came bursting through the ash, so life sprang up again farther east at Kokopo, an easy-going seaside town where the Kokopo Beach Bungalow Resort makes a charming stop, with restful wooden rooms and coloured lights in the trees.
The war left its mark here too, and you can visit grim underground tunnels built by the Japanese with Indian slave labour to hide their barges from Allied raids. There are more than 60 wrecked warships for divers to explore, while at Tavui Point the edge of the reef is so close to the shore it was used a quayside for submarines. As you snorkel here in clear, bath-warm water, the coral looks as cheery and colourful as a children’s nursery, then everything suddenly drops away in a 250ft underwater cliff pulsating with fish.
A similar thrill comes when I encounter the hot, bubbling waters of the desolate volcanic landscape that surrounds Mt Tavurvur. “I’ll guide you to the crater edge for 50 kina [£15],” says Julius, who emerges from the wasteland like a messiah in flip-flops, his lips bright red from chewing betel nut. In his hand is a bag of megapode eggs, harvested from the nests these birds bury six feet under the ash.
It’s a long, hot, 45-minute climb to the edge of the abyss, like a step-aerobics class devised by the devil. “We won’t stay long,” Julius cautions, “as there’s a danger of landslides and quicksand.” Judging from the plumes of smoke rising from the crater, there is also the possibility that it could blow up at any moment. But that’s how it goes in Papua New Guinea, where the world still feels raw and untamed, and an adventure is guaranteed.
Nowadays, Kavieng is reasonably well known for having access to a good range of quality reef breaks in relatively close vicinity. Surf within the Kavieng area is now well identified, and has hosted many a traveling surfer. Most breaks in New Ireland Province are reef breaks, and vary in their degree of difficulty, depending on the size and direction of the swell, and the depth of the reef.
Being based only a few degrees south of the equator ensures relatively stable weather patterns, although the area does enjoy good ocean swell generated in the North Pacific from Northern hemisphere monsoons (November to April). When these swells meet the myriad of reefs, the potential becomes very obvious. Swells generally range between 2 – 6 feet, and sometimes bigger. Most all breaks are over coral reef, which makes surfing all the more interesting. 
Visiting surfers to the Kavieng, East Coast, Central Coast and Lavongai (New Hanover) areas will need to make contact with the Niu Ailan Surfriders Alliance regarding the availability of space under the Management Plans. These Management Agreements are not exclusive to New Ireland, as other forms exist in other parts of Papua New Guinea, with the aim of fostering local club development, community development initiatives, good relations and just as importantly, sustainable surfing development and a truly unforgettable PNG surfing experience. Other locations are free to explore and utilize but it is essential that good sense prevail and residing communities be approached and give permission to Go for It ! Papua New Guinea acknowledges Customary Rights to Reefs and best not to simply assume, but to check first.
