Port Moresby

The harbour and the dry hills around it are the country of the Motu and Koita peoples, whose villages stood on the shore long before any European arrival. From Hanuabada and its neighbours the Motu sailed lakatoi, multi-hulled canoes with crab-claw sails, west along the Gulf of Papua on the hiri voyages, trading clay pots for sago and canoe logs. In 1873 the British naval officer Captain John Moresby entered the harbour and named it after his father, and London Missionary Society teachers settled among the Motu soon afterwards.

Britain proclaimed a protectorate over south-eastern New Guinea in 1884, and the colony passed to Australian administration, becoming the Territory of Papua in 1906 with Port Moresby as its seat. It remained a small government and trading town until 1942, when it became the principal Allied base in New Guinea. Japanese aircraft bombed it repeatedly, Japanese forces advanced towards it over the Kokoda Track before being turned back, and tens of thousands of troops passed through, leaving airfields, roads and wharves behind them.

Independence in 1975 made the town a national capital, and it has grown quickly and unevenly ever since. The government quarter at Waigani, Parliament House in 1984 and the university gave it national institutions, while migration from every province filled the hills with informal settlements faster than housing, water and power could follow. The city hosted the Pacific Games in 2015 and the APEC leaders' summit in 2018, and in January 2024 a sudden reduction in public servants' pay cheques, which the government put down to a computer error, triggered a protest strike, riots and widespread looting in which an estimated 22 people were killed.

Port Moresby is two things at once: the home of the Motu-Koita, who remain the traditional landowners, and a capital where people from every one of the country's provinces live side by side. Hanuabada, the stilt village on the harbour, is the anchor of the first, and the Hiri Moale Festival each September recalls the trading voyages with canoes, dancing and song. Hiri Motu, the trade language that grew out of Motu, is one of the country's national languages, though Tok Pisin and English are what people actually speak in the streets.

Newcomers tend to settle near others from their home province, and the wantok relationship — obligation to one's own language group and kin — shapes housing, work and politics. That gives the city a patchwork of provincial identities and makes national events, when clan groups arrive in feathers and paint, genuinely representative. Churches are central to social life, and Sunday services, choirs and church gatherings fill much of the weekend.

Rugby league is close to a national religion, followed with intensity at the Sir John Guise Stadium and in front of televisions everywhere; the national team, the Kumuls, carries an unusual weight of public feeling. Bilum string bags, carving and contemporary Papua New Guinean painting are sold at markets and shown at the National Museum, and string bands and gospel choirs are staples of local music. Visitors are expected to be courteous, patient and careful about photography.

Around 757,000 people were counted in the city at the 2024 census, against some 364,000 in 2011, and the number keeps rising. Formal jobs are in government, the courts, banks, the university, construction, shipping and the resource companies whose offices fill the downtown towers, but a large part of the population lives on informal trade: selling betel nut, cooked food, cigarettes and phone credit from roadside tables, or on piecework and family support.

The city divides clearly between the old harbour downtown, the government and commercial suburbs of Waigani, Boroko and Gordons, the planned housing of Gerehu and Morata, and the settlements on the hillsides where services are thinnest. High walls, razor wire, gates and guards are a defining feature of the built landscape. Power and water supply are unreliable, traffic on the few main roads is heavy at either end of the day, and rents in the secure areas are notoriously high.

Days begin early, with markets busiest in the morning and the streets emptying well before dark. Persistent concerns are crime and policing, the cost of living, unemployment among young people, tuberculosis and other health pressures on an overstretched hospital system, and how the revenue from mining and gas projects reaches ordinary households.

Coastal Papuan cooking is the base: reef fish, mud crab and shellfish, often cooked in coconut cream, with greens such as aibika, and boiled or roasted bananas, taro, yam and kaukau, the sweet potato brought down from the Highlands. Food for a celebration is cooked in a mumu, an earth oven of heated stones in which pork, chicken, greens and root vegetables steam under banana leaves. Sago, washed from the pith of the sago palm in the Gulf country to the west, appears as a stiff paste or baked into flat cakes.

Town food is different and cheaper: rice with tinned tuna or mackerel, instant noodles, fried chicken, lamb flaps grilled or stewed, scones and doughnuts sold from roadside stands. Koki's fish market has the day's catch, and Gordons Market brings in produce by truck from the coast and by aircraft from the Highlands. Malls and hotels support Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Korean and Australian restaurants, and a small cafe scene in the malls and the government suburbs serves Papua New Guinean arabica grown in the Highlands.

Betel nut, buai, chewed with mustard stick and lime, is everywhere in spite of public bans, and its red stains mark pavements across the city. Beer is the common drink, with locally brewed lager the standard, and fresh coconuts are sold on the street for a few coins.