Kavieng

New Ireland has been inhabited for tens of thousands of years, and the peoples of its northern tip — Tigak, Tungag and their neighbours — lived by fishing the reefs and passages and gardening thin coral soils, with shell and carved valuables moving along sea routes. Dutch explorers made the first European contact in 1616, and in the late nineteenth century blackbirding — the taking of young men, often by force, to work on plantations in northern Australia and other Pacific islands — was widespread here.

Germany annexed the archipelago in 1884 and made the sheltered harbour behind the northern islands a district station. Franz Boluminski, posted to the new station in 1899 and district officer from 1910 until his death in 1913, laid out Kavieng and made each village along the east coast build and maintain a section of the road that now bears his name. Coconut plantations spread along the coast, and Kavieng became a copra port. Australia took the colony in 1914 and administered New Ireland between the wars.

Japanese forces occupied Kavieng in 1942 and developed the harbour and airfield as an outpost of their base at Rabaul. Allied bombing sank ships in the harbour, where their wrecks remain, and in March 1944 at least twenty-three interned civilians were killed at the wharf, an episode that led to war crimes convictions. Almost completely destroyed, the town was rebuilt after 1945 and became the provincial capital after independence in 1975. Since then copra, cocoa, fishing and royalties from the gold mine on Lihir have supported the province, and Kavieng has drawn divers and surfers.

New Ireland's great artistic tradition is malagan, the carved and painted figures, masks and friezes made for the long cycle of funerary ceremonies that honour the dead and settle their obligations. Malagan pieces from this coast were collected in quantity by European administrators in the colonial period and can be seen in museums across Europe. The carvings were traditionally burnt or left in a cave to rot once the ceremony ended; most are kept now, in part because only a few carvers still hold the knowledge. The ceremonies, rather than the objects, are the point.

Central New Ireland took the tradition a different way. Its carvers made uli figures — less ornate than the malagan work of the north but more permanent, kept and reused across many ceremonies. The figures show both male and female features, and are thought to have stood for the joining of paternal and maternal life energy in initiation rites.

Christianity is near universal, with Catholic, United Church and Methodist histories going back to the mission era, and church choirs and Sunday services shape the week. Most of the province's people live in small rural villages rather than in the town, and the population is young: more than two in five are under fifteen. Kastom, church and provincial government coexist without much friction. The town is relaxed, people greet strangers, and rugby league, string bands and the surf fill spare time.

Kavieng is a small town of about seventeen thousand people, working as the administrative and trading centre for a province spread along a long, narrow island and its outliers. Jobs come from the provincial government, the wharf and shipping, the fisheries and copra trades, the hospital, schools and churches, a scatter of stores and workshops, and the lodges. A marine research centre of the National Fisheries Authority, opened on Nango Island in the harbour in 2009, gives the town a scientific presence.

The rhythm is early and unhurried. Canoes and dinghies bring islanders in to the market at dawn, trucks fill at the market for the run down the coast road, offices and stores close in the afternoon, and the town is quiet once the light goes. Village life on the islands and along the Boluminski road is close at hand: gardens of taro and sweet potato, drying copra, fish traps and nets, and cocoa fermentaries.

Copra and cocoa prices, the cost and reliability of shipping and flights, electricity supply and the state of the coast road are constant concerns. Royalties and employment from the Lihir mine flow into the province and are argued over. Sea-level rise and coastal erosion are felt on the low islands and atolls to the north, where families have had to move houses and gardens, and overfishing on the reefs near town is a live worry.

Kavieng eats from the reef and the garden, with coconut in nearly everything. Tuna, mackerel, reef fish, crab and shellfish are grilled over coals or cooked in coconut cream with aibika and other soft greens, and served with taro, yam, sweet potato, cassava, cooking banana or rice. Fish is also eaten raw, sliced and dressed with lime, chilli and coconut, particularly when a boat has just come in.

Feast food is cooked in the mumu, an oven of hot stones in a pit, where pork or chicken, root vegetables and greens wrapped in leaves steam for hours. Galip, the roasted canarium nut, is sold in bundles at the market, and breadfruit, pineapple, mango, pawpaw and many kinds of banana come in and out of season. Sago from the swampier parts of the island appears as pancakes and as a stiff jelly.

Everyday town food is simpler: rice with tinned mackerel, fried chicken or fish, lamb flaps, noodles and flour scones from the kai bars, with sweet tea. Lodge kitchens serve the day's tuna as steaks or sashimi with island vegetables. Cocoa grown along the coast is a cash crop rather than a local drink, and SP, the national lager, is the usual beer; buai, betel nut chewed with lime and mustard stick, is sold at every market table.