A Life Changing Experience

Eastern Highlands Flag

In 1979 I left New Zealand to head Papua New Guinea's only regional art school in Goroka, Eastern Highlands Province.

Being younger and still idealistic I felt the need to experience truly living in an indigenous culture as one of a minority; the reverse of my then circumstances in Rotorua where I was teaching art at Lakes High School.

It was also the first time I had travelled out of New Zealand and spending a stop over night at the YMCA in Sydney was a revelation with some of the largest cockroaches I had ever seen.

It was in hindsight a good introduction to the fauna I would alter experience in PNG but no where near as exotic.

QANTAS was the carrier and in later years I flew back and forth on Air New Guinea, an airline that I undertook professional photographic assignments for as time allowed.

Landing at Jackson Airport, Port Moresby was also my first introduction to the oppressive humidity of a tropical climate. I can still recall the sensation of the humidity greeting me as a stepped down the gangway and on to the tarmac. There were no air bridges in those days and customs formalities took place in a large covered concourse with eating fans in the ceiling.

The domestic airline flights where carried out by both Air Nuigini and a private company, Talair. The latter were often referred to as "Crash Air" which was rather unfair as their safety record was as good as could be expected flying smaller fixed wing planes in and out of highland airstrips.

Landing would often take place in steeply inclined strips and if I remember correctly, Wabag was one of these. Take off was a sudden acceleration down the strip and over what appear to be a precipice.

Later I got to know several of the Nuigini Helicopter and Talair pilots and flew in the co pilots jump seat in the twin otter aircraft from Goroka to Madang and return, over the Ramu valley.

Approaching the Dalau Pass one could discern the glint of metal in the undergrowth, evidence of a previous air disaster where a plane had navigated incorrectly through the narrow entrance and into the low cloud and mist of the Highlands.

It was fun and seat-of-the-pants flying and many of the Talair pilots were Jumbo jet crew who came to PNG to fly in their holidays and get in some "real flying".

The pilots told tales of tribesmen who had never flown attempting to eat the hand wipe towelettes in the mistaken belief that these were the in-flight meal.





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I was determined not to lead an isolated expat existence and to get as much from my time in PNG as I could, mixing with the locals and learning their life and customs.  There had been people living in the Eastern Highlands for the past 18,000 years and the first Europeans only made contact in the late 1920's, so there was plenty of local culture to assimilate.

Papua New Guinea was a life changing experience in more ways than one. In the intervening thirty years I have come to realise how this first contract in the tropics changed my life forever.