Madang

The shores of Astrolabe Bay were settled long before Europeans arrived, and the villages around the modern town spoke Austronesian languages and traded pots, food and valuables by canoe along the coast and out to the islands. The Russian naturalist Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay lived on the bay in the 1870s, and his accounts of the people he stayed among became some of the earliest detailed descriptions of the region published in Europe.

Germany annexed north-eastern New Guinea in 1884, and the German New Guinea Company laid out a harbour town here, naming it Friedrich-Wilhelmshafen. The company moved its headquarters to the new settlement in the 1890s and planted coffee, coconut and other export crops on the coastal flats, but malaria and dysentery killed staff and labourers in numbers, and the administration eventually shifted east to the islands in 1899. The name Madang, used by the Papuan workers who had come with the German administrators, became official towards the end of German rule; Australian forces took the colony in 1914, and the town settled into a quiet career as a copra port with Catholic and Lutheran missions along the coast.

Japanese troops occupied Madang in 1942 and used it as a supply base for the fighting inland and along the coast; Allied bombing and shelling destroyed most of what stood, and Australian soldiers entered the ruins in April 1944. The present town is essentially a post-war creation, rebuilt on the same peninsula around a wharf and a market, and it became the capital of Madang Province after independence in 1975. Nickel processing, a tuna cannery and a small but steady flow of divers have shaped it since.

Madang Province is one of the most linguistically diverse places on earth, with well over a hundred languages spoken across its islands, coast and mountain valleys, and the town is where those worlds meet. Tok Pisin does the work of a common language in the market and the street, English in offices and classrooms. The coastal communities nearest the town, including the potters of Bilbil, belong to Austronesian-speaking groups whose seaborne trade once carried clay pots north and south in exchange for sago, food and shell valuables.

Church life is central. Catholic and Lutheran missions have worked this coast since the nineteenth century, and Sunday fills the churches and empties the streets; choirs, church women's groups and mission schools organise much of the town's social calendar. Kundu drums, shell and feather dress and village dance groups appear at sing-sings for provincial occasions, school events and Independence Day in September.

Manners are gentle and indirect. Greetings, handshakes and a little small talk come before business, voices stay low, and open irritation is considered poor form. Almost all land, reef and beach is customary property, so visitors ask before crossing or swimming, usually through a host or guide. Betel nut, bought in small bundles at the market, is chewed almost everywhere, and rugby league is followed with real passion. Divine Word University gives the town an unusually large student population for its size.

About 30,000 people live in Madang, which makes it one of the country's larger provincial towns while remaining small enough to cross on foot. Work is concentrated in the provincial government, the wharf and shipping trades, the hospital and schools, the university, retail and the tuna cannery, and a good deal of the cash economy runs through the market, where island and village families sell what they grow, catch or gather. Coconut, cocoa and betel nut from the surrounding districts pass through the port.

The day begins early. Canoes cross from the islands at first light, market sellers set out produce, and public motor vehicles fill up along Modilon Road; by mid-afternoon the heat has slowed everything, and most business closes well before dark. Residential areas run inland from the peninsula, with settlements of migrants from the Sepik and the Highlands on the edges of town, where pressure on housing, water and power is greatest. Electricity and water supplies are unreliable, and generators and tanks are common.

Current concerns are familiar across urban Papua New Guinea: unemployment among young people, petty crime, the cost of imported food and fuel, and the state of the road to Lae. The Ramu nickel and cobalt operation in the province has brought jobs and royalties along with a long dispute over waste discharged into the sea, after an independent investigation in 2019 found that toxic slurry had been improperly released.

Madang eats from the reef and the garden. Tuna, reef fish, crayfish and shellfish are grilled, fried or stewed in coconut cream with aibika, the soft green leaf used across the lowlands, and served with taro, yam, sweet potato, cooking banana or rice. Sago, washed from the pith of the palm and cooked into pancakes or a stiff jelly, is more a Sepik and swamp staple than a town food, but it appears in the market and on village tables inland.

Feasts and family occasions mean a mumu, the earth oven: pork or chicken, root vegetables and greens wrapped in leaves and cooked on hot stones, often with coconut cream poured in. Galip, the local canarium nut, is roasted and sold in bundles, and the market fills seasonally with mangoes, pawpaw, pineapple, breadfruit and cooking bananas of many kinds. Island sellers bring smoked fish and green coconuts for drinking.

Everyday town food is simpler and cheaper: rice with tinned mackerel, fried chicken, lamb flaps, instant noodles and flour scones from the kai bars, washed down with sweet tea or soft drinks. Hotel kitchens on the waterfront cook the day's tuna alongside curries and imported meat. Coffee from the Highlands and cocoa from the coastal plantations are both local products, and SP, the national lager, is the usual drink with a meal.