Papua New Guinea
A country in Oceania, just north of Australia, and occupying the eastern half of the world’s second-largest island, New Guinea (the western half was controversially taken over by Indonesia from the Dutch in 1962), as well as a cluster of islands to the east, including in particular the Bismarck Archipelago with its main island New Britain.From the point of view of dark tourism, Papua New Guinea (PNG for short) is of interest primarily for its colonial and WWII history. These are the places in PNG that have their own separate entries on this website:
- Rabaul
At the end of the 19th century, the territory was split into an Imperial German colony in the north (Deutsch-Neuguinea) and British Papua in the south. The latter was given to the newly independent nation of Australia in 1902.
When WW1 broke out, Australia’s first involvement in that conflict was to seize the German colonies of the region, without facing all that much resistance. They remained under Australian administration after the war.
In WWII the Japanese advanced as far as New Guinea and also seized many of the outlying islands. Imperial Japan made Rabaul on New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago its headquarters for the South Pacific. They also took parts of the northern main island and in 1942 attempted to advance south along the so-called Kokoda Trail (aka Kokoda Track) to reach the south. But that plan was thwarted by the Australians, who, with American support, pushed the Japanese back along the Kokoda Trail, thus preventing Port Moresby from falling into Japanese hands. This Australian victory proved a turning point in the war. Another was the shooting down of General Yamamoto’s plane in 1943, after American codebreakers intercepted his intended flight path. So after he had taken off from Rabaul, US long-range fighter planes were sent after Yamamoto’s “Betty” bomber and they brought it down over the island of Bougainville, killing the general and the crew (see also the MacArthur Museum in Brisbane).
After WWII Papua New Guinea remained under Australian administration until 1975, when PNG was finally granted independence.
And now the easternmost island of PNG, Bougainville close to the Solomon Islands is set to become an independent nation state on 1 September 2027. There had been an extremely brutal war between separatists and government forces for decades (especially between 1988 and 1998), but in a 2019 referendum almost the entire population of Bougainville opted for independence. However, the referendum had technically been “non-binding” and the PNG parliament has not yet ratified the case for independence (although such a clear result would be hard to simply ignore). Bougainville could also become a potential dark-tourism destination, not least for the wreck of General Yamamoto’s plane (see above) that still lies in the rainforest of the island. Intrepid tours have gone there. But for this to become proper tourism, first the security situation there would have to improve …
But back to (“mainland”) PNG: its indigenous population is extremely diverse. The vast mountainous rainforest inland, once considered by the early colonialists to be uninhabited, is in fact home to a wide array of peoples speaking nearly a thousand different languages (making New Guinea the linguistically most diverse region on Earth). Often these languages are spoken by no more than a hundred people, but there are also larger groups. These mostly still lead a largely autonomous subsistence farming life. There have been inter-tribal conflicts, but the claim that this includes cannibalism is these days most likely no longer correct. Most of these peoples were “contacted” by foreigners only comparatively late, and there are said to be still “uncontacted” peoples in remote regions. The most widespread lingua franca amongst people who do have contact with each other is these days the pidgin language Tok Pisin, while English is widely used in elite and official circles.
PNG also features a great biodiversity, with hundreds of endemic species in its rich flora and fauna (scores of newly discovered ones are added regularly). The most fabled species is undoubtedly the bird of paradise, whose exuberant feathers were once even a prized trade commodity. The bird features e.g. on the national flag and in the logo for the national airline. And so I used a photo of a bird of paradise (taken at a wildlife refuge in Port Moresby) to also serve as the PNG lead photo above.
Inland New Guinea actually has the world’s third largest continuous cover of primeval rainforest – although some of it is under threat, like elsewhere, from mining and palm oil plantations.
The pristine wild nature and habitats of exotic animals are one of the key draws for tourism. Nature and cultural tourism are definitely the big thing here, dark tourism is comparatively niche and limited mostly to places that played important roles during WWII.
Travel to PNG is almost exclusively through its capital Port Moresby’s international airport, which is well appointed for foreign tourists, including a score of nearby international hotels. Beyond that travel within PNG can still be quite adventurous and unreliable. There are no railways and the road system is limited (mostly to coastal regions), so internal flights are the main means of getting around. And that can be problematic, as I learned myself the hard way.
My wife and I had booked a package from an Australian travel company specializing in unusual, remote and on-the-edge destinations (if you want to know who they are, contact me!). One of their offers was for a trip from Brisbane for a four nights/five days package to Rabaul, with one overnight stay in Port Moresby. I’ve long dreamed of one day going to Rabaul, so we booked this tour as an add-on to our 2024 Australia trip, though it wasn’t at all cheap. But then we never actually made it to Rabaul … This is what happened:
We were already checked in for our domestic flight from Port Moresby to Rabaul but when it was our turn at the baggage-drop desk we were casually informed that the plane was already full and we’d be refused boarding. Instead we were sent to the service desk of the national airline (Air Niugini – i.e. ‘Air New Guinea’ in Tok Pisin spelling). There were already a lot of other passengers who had also been refused boarding. Several sheets posted outside the office specified about seven flights affected by changes/cancellations that day.
We spent a good few hours (mostly waiting) at the service desk until we were finally informed that we’d been rebooked on the Rabaul flight the next morning. However, we had meanwhile learned from talking to a traveller with past experience of flying with Air Niugini and knowledge about Rabaul’s airport, that apparently they were doing some work on the runway there and that was the reason why a smaller plane was being used (which then didn’t have any space left for us). He also seemed to know that most work was being done in the mornings, so that it was rather unlikely any morning flights would take place. By then we had begun to refer to Air Niugini as “Air No-Going”!
The airline put us up for the night in a different hotel and arranged a transfer there (it wasn’t one of the airport hotels). We checked in, went to our room and found what I had meanwhile read in online reviews of the hotel to be true: that it was indeed totally infested with cockroaches. So we made sure to keep our luggage closed and during the night left the lights on (cockroaches shun bright lights). We had a decent meal in the hotel restaurant and then were told by reception that indeed our morning flight to Rabaul had already been cancelled too and that we’d be re-rebooked on to the evening flight.
We had some exchanges with the organizers of our package and the next day made the decision to ditch the idea of getting to Rabaul. We had already lost at least half of our itinerary and even if we managed to tweak the second day’s itinerary, there wouldn’t have been enough time to see even just the most important sites. Plus there was the slight problem that our scheduled flight from Rabaul back to Port Moresby would have been in the morning – so would probably not go. But we couldn’t risk getting back to Port Moresby any later since we had a mid-day connection with our flight back to Brisbane and a same day onward late evening flight to Nauru (and that was too important and expensive to risk losing as well). Instead we decided to bring our flight to Brisbane forward to the next day to lower the risk of missing that onward flight (and booked an expensive hotel room in Brisbane, as at that short notice the choice was, well, rather limited …).
Instead of Rabaul we were then offered a tour by the same local company that would have done the guiding in and around Rabaul, namely to take us to the Kokoda Trail and a few places in Port Moresby. So at least our trip to PNG would not be a complete waste of time and money … Yet it cost us dearly extra, as the tour was not offered in exchange for Rabaul, but as an extra paid service (even though our Rabaul guide was with us on the Kokoda tour, as it turned out). And the charge was significant (something like 500 USD, if I remember correctly).
When back home we tried to claim some of the costs for the Rabaul tour that never happened back from our travel insurance they refused to pay … nothing at all. So PNG stands as one of the worst travel disasters of my long and varied travel history (it was probably even worse than having missed out on Baikonur years earlier).
So, to be quite honest, I’m finding it hard to recommend PNG as a dark travel destination after all this. But if you do want to go, and time and money aren’t an issue, then I would highly recommend being as flexible as possible time-wise. Plan for at least two buffer days between different places within PNG … as we were hardly the only ones who’ve encountered such problems. I’ve meanwhile heard some horror stories of people being stuck for days in remote corners of the country waiting for “Air No-Going” finally having the mercy to fly them out …