Popondetta Airport, Oro

Like I mentioned before, one day while waiting for my plane to come in, a very popular pastime in Papua New Guinea, I was out chatting to the locals, and there were bag after bag after bag after bag of Betel Nut just sitting on the tarmac. Now I'm thinking, I sure do hope these bags are not getting on my flight because we are not going to get over the Owen Stanleys unless they send a Antonov.

So I am chatting to the locals and I discover that some very entrepreneurial kinda guys have chartered a plane to carry them and their Betel Nut to Moresby, they say it has cost them K23,000 for the plane but they reckon they got K40,000 to K50,000 worth of nut to sell. Now Betel Nut is a bit cyclical and it seems sometimes that it can be a bit seasonal (like a lot of produce) and my friends tell me that Oro Betel Nut is red-hot at the moment and the chewers of Moresby are just itching to get their teeth into some of Oro's finest.

So I left my Betel Nut Empire Kings and wandered around a bit more, and I found myself chatting to a man named Nathan whose Father Pol Toki owns and operates the Birdwing Butterfly Lodge, now I never stayed there, but I wished I had. I had a great time chatting to Nathan and his family and I kinda feel that his hospitality at the Birdwing may have been more pleasant than the Hotel Lamington, which is not the best of the Coral Seas chain of Hotels, and I think it may have slipped out of the Coral Seas group nowadays... but anyway, Nathan's daughter was sitting in the back of the ute eating the much loved PNG Cracker Biscuits, I think it may have been the Snax Chicken Cracker brand this time and Nathan asked if I could take her photo; which I did and later in Moresby, I printed the photo and sent it to Nathan. And he wrote a letter back to me which I still keep and is in my Lonely Planet guide, on the page of the Birdwing Butterfly Lodge, Oro.

Here is Nethalean.

Popondetta, Oro.

Popondetta; the Provincial Capital of the Oro Province and just quietly, its kinda stuck between a rock and hard place. I mean, I liked the place but it has a tough life ahead of it.

Here's how I saw it. Popondetta is a tough neighbourhood; I did quite a bit of solo travelling in PNG and I wandered around freely in many towns with the locals all telling me that "Nah, there's no raskols here" but in Popondetta, all the locals were saying "Take Care, Popondetta is full of raskols". This didn't stop me though, I wandered around the town and had no dramas, so I don't know what the fuss is about.

Popondetta; it's not on the coast so it doesn't have a huge ex-pat community, it's not Kokoda, so it doesn't get a huge influx of tourists, Cyclone Guba smashed all the bridges in the Province so road travel is a bit hit and miss, the Oil Palm doesn't seem to be as fruitful as those in New Britain and it doesn't look like the LNG project is going to be of any benefit to this part of PNG. The only thing that looked like it was going well was Betel Nut. Boy did I see a heap of that going on board a chartered Airlines PNG flight to Moresby! Street value was between K40,000 to K50,000 worth! Whoo oooh!

There's a problem here and it stems from the management of this Province, while I was in Oro, the LLG at Kokoda were being stifled for funds from Big Brother Popondetta because of Jealousies; that evil which permeates PNG culture. Kokoda gets all the international fan fare because of the track and it gets all of the tourists, yet the PLG based in Pop are unlikely to help progress Kokoda yet there is little reason to develop the Provincial Capital. What is the future for Popondetta? And I haven't even mentioned the other big Tourist Drawcard for Oro and that is the spectacular Tufi fjords.


So these pictures represent the people I met and worked with, chatted to and enjoyed a few stories during my visits to Popondetta. Nicky was a chap who cleaned up the Popondetta Memorial, which comprised of a collection of Battlefield Memorial Plaques that honour the role and sacrifice made by the Australian Soldiers during WW2 in the Oro region. Nicky and his mate John Billy were happy go lucky blokes who sat and chatted with me for a while, when I chose to visit the Memorial site one afternoon.

The lady and her baby were sitting under a nearby raintree just telling stories and chewing Betelnut with her friends; and they enjoyed chatting to the white guy. It was someone in this group who explained to me that the way the police allegedly deal with raskols in Popondetta was to knee-cap them, often resulting in the loss of a leg below the knee. It was after hearing this that I then started to notice so many young men in Popondetta were on crutches and only having one and a half legs! Oh dear.

And they love to gamble in Popondetta, well they love to gamble all over PNG, but in Popondetta it was huge; Gambling was everywhere and the high/low games were the popular choice.

In fact, there was prohibition on the sale of alcohol in Popondetta, after the Guba Flooding and a PLG election; the prohibition was lifted on the very day I flew into town. By 9am that morning, everyone was drunk, I saw SP bottles being launched out of a Police Car, I saw the recently elected PLG staff dancing drunkly with each other at the Hotel Lamington and I saw home brew sales decrease dramatically. What a wild night that was!

The future of Popondetta? I don't know... but what a ride...

Oro

The final Province on my blogging quest and although PNG has new Provinces today, they formed after I left and I had visited those areas on my tour of duty, so I come to the Oro Province or Northern province I think it was once called. Oro, Oro, Oro means welcome and it is quite often you will hear this greeting in this wide and varied Province.

I travelled to Oro a few times for both work and play and I got to see a fair part of the place, from the Coast to the Provincial Centre; Popondetta to the Mountains. I once walked to Oro, I landed there in Fokker 100s, in Twin Otters, Dash-8s and Helicopters, but never sailed there, and trying to recall what tales I should write about, I looked to my photographs for inspiration and what I saw was a collection of people who made the Oro Province special and I saw in their eyes an interesting question and that was "Where does the future lie for Oro and its people?"

The biggest drawcard for tourism in PNG in recent years is in no doubt, the Kokoda Track and thousands of Australians line up each trekking season (if Koiarian Barney Jack allows) and walk between Oro and Central Provinces. Some of these Aussies stay on to get a dive in somewhere, or visit other wartime locations but it seems to me that the real winner from the Kokoda Track is the NCD, but I digress. Some of my tales of Oro dwell around Kokoda and its path over the Owen Stanleys.



Photos and Blog notes to come...

Enga

Now, I've always been an Outdoor Type, but I have always had a roof above me and I've always paid the rent... thanks go to The Lemonheads there. And I have always been curious as to what lives in our world, be they trees that grow majestically into the sky or little rock daisies growing in the rain clouds to the birds and lizards and rats that inhabit these environments and it was the drawcard of PNG's most rugged landscape of Enga that drew me into the Mountains. I met many Engans in my time in Moresby and they all wanted me to take them back so they could show me their Enga! But my girlfriend and I just wandered up there ourselves to take a look, and it was in Enga that I entered a "bushwalker" and left a "birdwatcher".

Enga amazes me how such a rugged, mountainous part of PNG where foot travel is difficult, yet it only has the one Tok Ples whereas the Sepik region where river travel is commonplace and trading is a daily way of life has many Tok Ples. Enga confused all logic for me on this subject. But Enga is a gorgeous environment and despite staying at Kumul Lodge for my duration, we did get a few bus trips into the heart of Enga. Kumul Lodge is right on the Engan Hagen border and it offers spectacular views of Mt Hagen, and it has a huge array of birdlife, right on the steps of the lodge itself.

I have decided that pictures of the birds there will say more than my words...

Mum feeding her young

Male Ribbon Tailed Astrapia

A Tiger Parrot


Female Brown Sicklebill


Crested Berrypecker



Common Smoky Honeyeater whose eye patch changes colour from yellow to red, depending on his mood.


Archbold's Bower Bird.

A gorgeous Crested Bird of Paradise, some say should no longer be a Bird of Paradise, but in the Cnemophilus group of its Scientific nomenclature...

Milne Bay

The pointy end of PNG; and I am disappointed that I never made it out to the Islands. But I did get a reasonable look around the East Cape. It is interesting, I was always under the impression that the coastal people of PNG were taller and leaner then their Highland cousins, but Milne Bay was not the case; the size 28 girls were quite short in stature and petite to describe it at best. The young men of Milne Bay were similar in that I was reasonably tall amongst a crowd.

I once asked my host if there were any raskols in Alotau, and the answer was "No, no raskols, everyone peaceful and loving"

"Sounds good" I say, "I might take a walk down to the markets"

"No, no, no, I will come with you... for safety."

"But you say there are no raskols?" I ask.

"No, no, no raskols but someone might steal your backpack..." was the response.

Ok, so I had my guide for a stroll around town. Tall white guy stands out a bit amongst the locals, so I thought I'd err on the side of caution. On other occasions I have wandered around Alotau on my own and no-one has tried to pinch me backpack, they have tried to sell me all sorts of carvings and shell necklaces, but no raskols. I did buy a fish carving once and he sits above me on the shelf.

Alotau is made up of its various cultural groups, all the Trobiand Islanders live in one part of town, all those from Samurai live in another, all those from the East Cape live elsewhere and the people from Alotau live in the biggest grouping. I soon discovered that there was rivalry between the clans???

Walking through the town of Alotau one day with my friend Tom, I spotted a long waterfall cascading off the nearby mountain. Alotau is a harbour town surrounded by many, many peaks, some over 1,000metres tall, and it was off of one of these peaks that I spotted the waterfall. I asked Tom if he was up for a walk to the waterfall, and he replied that it was a very long walk. I asked "How long?" and he replied "One hour there and one hour back".

"Well let's go!" and off we did. We decided to shortcut through, past Tom's house and right through the middle of the Trobiand clan, but this was cool for Tom was from the Trobiands. He taught me a few phrases in his Tok Ples and I was a riot as we wandered through his village. We stopped and kicked a football around, we sat and told stories with Tom's wantoks and we then continued on our walk up the hill. As we left the Village, a group of young size 28 girls were all calling out and laughing, and slapping each other, and I didn't need to speak the language to understand that their calls were directed at the Tall White Guy. Tom was giggling, so I played along and said "Hey Tom, what are those girls saying about me?"

Tom, between giggles said "They are all saying 'Tom, where are you taking my white husband, why are you taking him up the river'". Tom and I had a good laugh as we continued our journey. Now the road we trod crossed a stream, which I thought was a good thing because waterfalls often end up in streams and we were heading in the right direction. I asked Tom if I should take my boots off, to keep them dry and he said "No point, we'll cross the river only once". I think he meant to say "Once we enter the stream, we will remain in the stream until we return to this point." because we crossed this stream maybe 30 or 40 times, to the extent, we just stayed in the water and waded up.

A fair way up the stream, we came across a group of men working on an inlet to a pipe, the catchment area had silted up during recent floods and these men were restoring the inlet so that the town of Alotau could have fresh water again. We stopped had a chat and said about the waterfall. The interesting thing here is... hardly anyone speaks Tok Pisin in Milne Bay, everyone speaks their Tok Ples and many will speak English. They say they do not want to speak the language of the Mountain people, and they will continue to learn English. The Cameron school has produced some fine and upstanding citizens of PNG, I used to work with a few of the graduates and the people of Milne Bay speak and understand English very well.

So we kept walking and soon afterwards, about one hour from our start including football and stories, we made it to the waterfall and what a poor display of a waterfall! There was this small cliff of rocks with a busted tree leaning up against it with a trickle of water cascading off the rocks. I said "Tom, this is not the same waterfall we saw from Town?"

Tom said "I'm sorry, but that waterfall goes through a clan that I do not trust and I cannot take you there on my own, if we had many friends with us, then it would be okay, but not today."

I replied "Hey that's cool Tom, I am glad you thought of your own safety as well as mine, and this waterfall is alright, besides its a nice spot for a rest and a story and some kaikai"

So we sat down enjoyed some PNG made Twisties, and a can of PNG made Coke and we rested and told stories.

And afterwards, we walked back down to town, through the Trobiand Clan and home again. Maybe one day I shall return, find Tom, organise a big posse and walk to the other waterfall?

Western Highlands Province

80 years ago, tho opinion about PNG was that it was a large tropical Island in the Pacific with a scarce coastal population. Most of the other mountainous islands or countries around the world had the majority of their population living on the coast and why should the Land of the Unexpected be any different, and more likely it was too bloody cold for Melanesians up in the Mountains. Many of the early explorers to PNG were having a hard time of it, what with aggressive locals trying to run one out of town everytime an explorer set foot on their patch, so what was on top of PNG was unknown, until the Leahy Brothers showed up and decided they would fly up into the mountains.

What a brand new world they found, but this has been documented far more successfully by others and is not what my blog is about, my blog is about what I discovered in these mountains.

So there I am sitting in the passenger front seat of a Toyota PMV, the small version like a Hiace. My GF is sitting in the middle seat and Enga's answer to Ayrton Senna is in the Driver's Seat and her Sister is asleep in the back. Now we had already been raced across the Western Highlands with this driver before a few days earlier so we had tried to crawl into the back of the van and somewhere akin to the most central point of the vehicle, but our driver wouldn't have it. She had such a wonderful few days with us, that she decided the pair of us will sit up front with her at the very front of the vehicle. So we climbed in and held on.

On the descents which there were plenty of in the mountains, she would push the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor, to where it would stay, and the Van would screeeeeaaaammm down the road, and as the road then went up, she would keep the foot there on the gas and it would not budge until, due to the steepness of the incline, the Van was nearly at stalling point. At this moment she would then start to change down through the gears until she got to first and then the Toyota would screeeeeaaaaammm back into life. Cornering was the same, wait until the Van was nearly about to topple, then left off the gas and try a little braking, whilst looking for a more appropriate gear.

This was a rollercoaster.

To help set up the story, a few nights earlier, GF and I were sitting around a cosy fire in a well constructed timber lodge, we were drinking SP and chatting to the staff of the lodge about life in the Mountains and we were regaling them with stories of Moresby and of Australia. One of the young ladies was telling us about her life, and that she was the eldest of many siblings and it was the time in her life to decide would she continue her education (which she and her parents could not afford) or should she get a job and help out at home, so it was working in the lodge for the time being. Her plan was to save and head to the bright lights of Moresby one day. I thnk she was asking whether or not GF and I needed a hausmeri... but I digress...

Our driver was with us that night and she had travelled the world more than us, yet her stories were all about home and family and snakes. Boy did she not like snakes, and while telling these stories her skin would dry up and she would go all clammy, she went pale just talking about snakes. So 2 days later while driving through the Mountains at breakneck speed, what do you think happened when we saw the Snake?

This was no ordinary snake, this was easily a stunt double snake for that one in the movie Annaconda, you know the movie with JLo and that Ice guy. This was seriously the biggest snake I had seen, it looked like s speed hump! It was stetched out on the Highlands Highway from one side of the road to the other! This made me think it was dead, no snake slithers with a straight back, and there was a man standing alongside the snake, just looking at it. I think this man had put the snake there and was waiting for people to drive over the snake, and somebody already had, you could see two tyre tracks through the snake.

Now back to our driver, she was descending like I mentioned before, pedal through the firewall and she liked a chat, so she was yacking away going as fast as the car, and then she saw the Snake.

She Screeeeeaaaaammmmeeeeddddd! She covered both her eyes with both of her hands and she screamed some more. Each scream would exhaust her of breath so in between gasps of breath and trying to get some more oxygen, she would sob, and then she would scream once again, all the time her leg would be locked in place on that accelerator pedal and her hands would be over her eyes. Still screaming and the little Toyota was hurtling down the mountain road.

GF had grabbed the wheel and made sure we were heading in a straight line, but we could do little to wash any speed off. It was at this moment that I thought that once again in PNG I would die, I remembered swimming with sharks off Rabaul, I remembered being smashed and cut up on the reef in Bougainville, I remembered the forcewave that followed a massive boom from Tavuvur, I remembered the amazing energy from the lightning bolt in Moresby and I remembered not feeling too good climbing a mountain with pneumonia and it all felt like this one moment maybe my last. Here I am sitting in a passenger seat of a Toyota with a screaming crying Engan meri covering her eyes and hurtling towards a snake.

But then, oh yes, it gets worse...

The car hits the snake, the tyres hit the snake like a heart beat; da-dum. This triggers another wave of hysterics, screaming and crying and sobbing and screaming and crying and screaming! This wakes up her sister in the back and she says "Whassup?" Our driver screams "Snaaaaaaaaakkkkekeeeee" and the sister looks through the back window and sees the snake we have just run over.

Needless to say, the sister does not like snakes. So she screams and screams and screams and screams. This sets of the driver who screams again, which triggers off screams from her sister. By this stage I think GF wants to join in, but she is too busy trying to keep the car on the bitumen.

So there I am, about to die with not one, but two screaming Engan meris in a van in the Mountains... and seeing as I am here to retell the story, GF did a fantastic job keeping the bus on the road, everyone settled down and we continued our trip acrsoo the Western Highlands.

Oh yeah, later on while in Hagen, we stopped for the best coffee in PNG at the Airport Coffee Cafe and in a quiet moment I said to our driver "How big was that snake?" . The screams started again, the tears, I got punched by an Engan meri again and again (a sign of affection apparently)...

Simbu

Call it what you like, Chimbu or Simbu, there is no doubt that Simbu is up there with Enga in regards to mountains and so it was here that we climbed. Go back and read my Madang entry to find an escape route from the highest point of PNG.

Our goal was not to reach the highest point of PNG, I am not a mountain climber, I'm a bushwalker so I had no real desire to get to the summit of Mt Wilhelm but I was keen on trekking at least up to Base Camp, so here goes...

Betty picked us up from Hagen, well from her coffee shop by the airport and after stopping at some markets and fording a broken river we left the Western Highlands and entered the mountainous region of Simbu, the air was cool, the grass were green and the locals friendly as we scooted along the Highlands Highway. At Kudiawa, we turned left and the road went up and up and up along a dirt track we drove. At one point I looked out of my window and looked down, just a bare few inches from the edge of our vehicle, the road disappeared and the edge of the valley just disappeared below. I could see clearly 170 metres down into the valley. I whispered to my girlfriend "I am not driving out of this mountain range, we're walking to Madang, it's safer".

We came to a bridge, or what was left of one; the timber was gone, but luckily for us, a small fee paid to some boys on the side of the road soon revealed that the lads had some timber tucked away that just so happened to fit the bridge we wanted to cross, so over we went. Thanks to the lads and their suitably sized timber! Road Tax anyone? But we finally made it to Betty's Lodge and her visitor's book made for fantastic reading as we looked for our friends who had trekked before us.

Now, the reason why we were there was to walk up to Base Camp and then wander down the road to neighbouring Madang, so up we got bright and early, got the fire going, warmed ourselves up and then off we went. Now the Governor General of PNG had walked to Base Camp only a few months before us and to make things easier for old Sir Paulius Matarne, they had cut timber legths into quarters and placed these wedges into the soft wet earth to make a sorta track through the forest. I don't know what was better, wet slippery mud or wet slippery timber? But once you learned how to place your foot on the high edge of the timber pieces, walking was a breeze, except that at 3,000 metres abover sea level, the air is a little thinner and it took us a few rest stops to get to Base Camp.

Base Camp is on the edge of Lake Pindaunde and the lake is part of a series of lakes joined by waterfalls all situated in a series of steps which leave the rainforest behind some few hundred metres below and make their way up to the rocky craggs of PNG's highest mountain. You step out of the rainforest onto a grass and heather covered plateau, tall Tree Ferns stand majestically and sway in the cold damp wind. Everything is wet, this is the cloud forest of PNG, where the heat from the coastal rim of this large island rises up into the mountains; it drags moisture from the seas and oceans that surround PNG and it is here at 3,400 m ASL that this moisture condenses and saturates all. The clouds would roll up the valley and completely cover the rocky craggs that surrounded us, the clouds would hug the mountain would enclose it and then would disappear and expose to us the formidable rock formations that seemd to be alive. They looked as if everytime the clouds would leave, the rocks would lean forward, almost spying on us only to retreat as the clouds would once again engulf the stone.

We sat at the edge of the lake and we listened, we could hear the crackle of a small fire that Dominic (our Guide and Security) was making for tea, we could hear the clouds moving in and out of the rocky crevices like ghosts, we could hear tiny finches calling to one another as they found a new yellow daisy to inspect, we could hear the waterfall on the other side of the lake roaring into the depths below, we could hear our own heartbeats as we tried to relax after the tough 3 hour walk to get there and most of all, we could hear peace.

But then we could hear a helicopter, mixmasta bilong jisas crais and this one was a blackhawk from the Australian Defence Force on route to Madang. We would see the same machine a week later when we relaxed with a beer on the waterfront of Madang. But that was the only modern disturbance; peace soon returned to our ears. Apart from the odd helicopter, the other things we could not hear were mobile phones, computers, alarms, cars, trucks and babies crying; all those dreadful noises that plague us in the western world.

It was perfect. The cup of tea was like no other cup of tea I have ever had, the colour had a rubiness to it, and there was no bitterness to it, it was tea as it should be.

Our moment of enlightenment passed, we then legged it back down the mountain to Betty's Lodge. We almost ran back as we were filled with a new purity, and it gave us motivation and speed in our legs. What was a trudging 3 hours to climb took just under an hour to get home. Our goal to see Base Camp was achieved, the next aim was to walk to the beach in Madang and follow the footsteps of a dear friend of ours. Vale.