Port Moresby & the Southern Region

The coast around Port Moresby is the land of the Motu and Koita peoples. Each year the Motu sailed great lakatoi, multi-hulled canoes with crab-claw sails, west to the Gulf of Papua in the hiri trading voyages, exchanging their clay cooking pots for sago and canoe logs. Further east the islands of Milne Bay were linked by the kula ring, the ceremonial exchange of shell necklaces and armbands made famous by the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski's work in the Trobriand Islands.

Captain John Moresby surveyed the harbour in 1873 and named it after his father, and London Missionary Society teachers settled among the Motu soon after. Britain proclaimed a protectorate over the southeast of New Guinea in 1884, and the colony of British New Guinea passed to Australia, becoming the Territory of Papua in 1906, run from Port Moresby, with Samarai in Milne Bay as a busy trading port.

In 1942 the region became a front line. Japanese forces landed on the Oro coast and pushed over the Kokoda Track towards Port Moresby before being driven back, while at Milne Bay Australian troops defeated a Japanese landing in August and September. The battles of Buna and Gona on the Oro coast followed at heavy cost. In 1951 the eruption of Mount Lamington in Oro killed about 3,000 people.

Port Moresby became the capital at independence in 1975 and has grown fast since. In Western Province the Ok Tedi copper and gold mine brought revenue and severe pollution of the Fly River system, leading to lawsuits and compensation claims, and the PNG LNG pipeline now crosses the Gulf to a plant near the capital.

The Motu and Koita remain the traditional landowners of Port Moresby, and Hanuabada, their village on the harbour, is still lived in. Hiri Motu, the trade language of the old voyages, grew from Motu and is one of the country's official languages, though Tok Pisin and English dominate in the capital today. The Hiri Moale festival recalls the voyages with canoe races, dancing and a beauty contest around Independence Day.

The capital also gathers people from every province, and settlements are often organised by home area, with wantok ties shaping jobs, housing and politics. In Milne Bay, the matrilineal Trobriand Islanders still hold the yam-harvest season, when yams mark wealth and standing, play their own boisterous form of cricket and trade in the kula. Alotau's Kenu and Kundu festival brings war canoes and drumming groups from across the province.

Oro Province is known for barkcloth, called tapa, painted with bold designs, especially among the Maisin people. The Gulf Province once staged great masked cycles among the Elema people, and carving and canoe-building traditions continue along its rivers and in Western Province. Rugby league is followed everywhere, and the national team, the Kumuls, plays its home matches in Port Moresby.

Port Moresby is the largest city, with several hundred thousand people and growing, spread between the old downtown by the harbour, the government district of Waigani, and fast-growing informal settlements on the hills. Government, the national university, banks, construction and the resource companies provide most formal jobs, but many residents live on informal trade — selling betel nut, cooked food and phone credit at roadside stalls. High walls, razor wire and security guards shape the look of the city.

Outside the capital the region is thinly populated and rural. Alotau, the Milne Bay capital, is a small harbour town; Popondetta serves Oro's oil-palm and cocoa growers; Kerema in the Gulf and Daru, an island off the Western Province coast, are remote and poorly served. Villages live from gardens, fishing and sago, with cash from copra, betel nut, cocoa and seasonal work in town.

Current concerns include crime, rapid urban growth, unreliable electricity and water in the capital, tuberculosis, and continuing disputes over how mining and gas revenues reach the landowners of the Fly River and the Gulf.

Coastal cooking rests on fish, shellfish and coconut: reef fish and mud crab cooked in coconut cream, and greens such as aibika simmered with coconut milk and served with boiled bananas, taro or yam. In the Gulf and along the Fly River, sago — the starch washed from the pith of the sago palm — is the staple, eaten as a jelly-like paste or baked into flat cakes, with river fish and game.

Milne Bay and the Trobriands are yam country, and the size and quality of a family's harvest carries social weight. Earth-oven mumu feasts of pork, chicken and root vegetables mark weddings, funerals and church events.

Port Moresby's markets sell smoked fish, betel nut with mustard stick and lime, and cooked bananas wrapped in leaves, while town food leans on rice, tinned tuna, instant noodles and fried chicken. Lager is the everyday beer, and Highlands coffee is served in the city's hotel cafes.

Port Moresby holds the National Museum and Art Gallery, the Parliament House built in the style of a Sepik spirit house, the Port Moresby Nature Park, and Bomana War Cemetery, where Australian soldiers of the New Guinea campaigns are buried. Ela Beach and Hanuabada lie close to downtown. Inland, Varirata National Park on the Sogeri Plateau has forest walks and birdwatching, and Owers' Corner marks the start of the Kokoda Track, a trek of four to twelve days over the Owen Stanley Range to Kokoda village, passing battle sites and mountain villages.

To the east, Milne Bay's diving is the main draw: reefs, muck diving and Second World War wrecks around Alotau, where memorials recall the 1942 battle. Beyond lie Samarai, the old colonial port, and the Trobriand Islands. On the Oro coast, Tufi's fjords are steep drowned valleys where guesthouses offer reef diving, snorkelling and village visits, and the battlefields of Buna and Gona lie further north.

West of the capital, the Gulf and Western river country is among the least visited parts of the country: the Kikori River and its delta, the Fly River winding through forest and swamp, and Lake Murray, the country's largest lake, where villages and birdlife are reached only by boat and small plane.