Rabaul

The Gazelle Peninsula was Tolai country long before Europeans came, and traders and Methodist and Catholic missionaries arrived in the second half of the nineteenth century, among them the planter Emma Forsayth, who bought land from local chiefs and built up a large coconut and cocoa plantation around Kokopo. Germany annexed the Bismarck Archipelago in 1884, and after running New Guinea from Kokopo, then called Herbertshöhe, moved the colonial capital in 1910 to a new town laid out in avenues of poinciana and mango beside the deep water of Simpson Harbour. Australian troops took the colony in 1914, and Rabaul became the capital of the Australian-mandated Territory of New Guinea, a place of bungalows, clubs and copra firms. In 1937 Vulcan and Tavurvur erupted together, killing 507 people and destroying the town, after which the territorial headquarters were moved to Lae.

Japanese forces captured Rabaul in January 1942 and made it their main base in the South Pacific, with airfields, a fleet anchorage and about 110,000 troops by 1943, who dug many kilometres of tunnels into the surrounding hills. Allied bombing wrecked the town and the shipping in the harbour, and the garrison was left isolated until the surrender in 1945.

The capital of the territory moved to Port Moresby after the war, and Rabaul was rebuilt as a provincial town and port. On 19 September 1994 Tavurvur and Vulcan erupted together; evacuation drills and warnings kept the death toll to five, but the weight of ash collapsed most of the buildings in the south-eastern half of the town. The provincial capital moved to Kokopo, and Rabaul was rebuilt smaller, on its western side.

Rabaul sits in the heartland of the Tolai, whose institutions have survived colonisation, war and eruption with unusual strength. Tabu, the shell money made from small cowries threaded on cane, is still counted out at marriages, funerals and compensation payments, and holding and distributing it carries standing. The tubuan and dukduk, tall masked figures of men's societies, appear at ceremonies that mark deaths, initiations and the raising of new masks; they are treated with respect and some fear, and are not simply a spectacle.

In the hills of the interior live the Baining, known for the night fire dance, in which dancers wearing huge bark-cloth masks leap through and over burning embers, accompanied by an all-male orchestra of percussion. The masks are made for a single night and destroyed afterwards. The dance has become a fixture of cultural festivals and a draw for visitors, and the Baining have taken it up as a symbol of their identity.

Church life runs alongside custom. Catholic, United Church and other congregations date from the mission era, and Sunday singing carries across the town. The war and the eruption are living memory in different ways: families remember evacuation, and old Japanese and Australian relics are part of the landscape. Rabaul has a long-standing Chinese community, descended from the labourers, carpenters and shopkeepers who came in the German period, which left its mark on the town's shops and food. Rugby league is followed closely, and string bands and Tolai singing groups remain popular.

Rabaul today is a town of about four thousand people, down from more than seventeen thousand before 1994, with far more living along the bay towards Kokopo, which took over as the provincial capital and the region's commercial centre after 1994. Work in Rabaul revolves around the port, which still handles cargo and cocoa and copra exports, the market, trade stores and workshops, schools and churches, and the volcano observatory. Many households combine a wage with gardens, fishing and selling produce or cooked food.

Life is lived with the volcano. Ash from an active vent settles on roofs, gardens and water tanks, and residents sweep it away, wash it off crops and repair corrugated iron, as earlier generations did after 1937. The ash fields where the old town stood are partly reoccupied, with houses among buried walls, and Matupit village continues on ground that has been evacuated more than once. Earthquakes are frequent enough to be unremarkable.

The wider Gazelle Peninsula is one of the most productive rural areas in the country, its villages growing cocoa, coconuts and food crops and selling through the markets at Rabaul and Kokopo. That prosperity is uneven: unemployment among young people, disputes over customary land, ageing infrastructure and the cost of shipping and fuel all feature in local discussion, as does whether more of Rabaul should be rebuilt at all.

East New Britain cooking is built on coconut. The best-known dish is aigir, chicken, pork or fish with greens, taro and sweet potato wrapped in banana leaves and cooked with hot stones and coconut cream until it is soft and sweet-smelling. Mumu, the earth oven, does similar work for feasts, and reef fish, crab and shellfish are grilled or stewed in coconut milk. Taro, yams, bananas, sweet potato and breadfruit are the everyday starches, with aibika and other soft greens.

Two local specialities stand out. Galip, the canarium nut, is gathered around the Gazelle Peninsula and eaten roasted or raw. Megapode eggs, laid by birds that bury them in warm volcanic ground rather than sitting on them, are dug up for food: they are mostly yolk, and are treated as a delicacy and given as gifts between families. Cocoa grown on the peninsula's smallholdings is the other mainstay, sold through the markets and the port.

Everyday town food is rice with tinned fish, fried chicken, lamb flaps and noodles from the kai bars, with sweet tea. The long-settled Chinese community brought stir-fries, noodles and buns, which have become part of the local diet, and hotel kitchens along the bay serve fresh tuna and sashimi. SP, the national lager, is the usual beer.