Madang Memories

There are few prettier places to visit in Papua New Guinea than Madang which is on the Bismark Sea coast.  After months in the Highlands it was welcome respite to take a Talair flight to the northern coast and spend a few days of in the tropical climate under the palms.

Madang Girl

I visited Madang several times although the first was one of the most memorable. I stayed on Siar island which is a small island close to the main town of Madang.

The enterprising headman, Paul Munz, collected me in his dug out canoe and ferried me across to the island for a weekend of island culture, living amongst the local villagers.

Accommodation was in a beach side, thatched roof haus; termed a bure elsewhere in the Pacific.  The sound of garamut drums and string bands filled the air each evening when the heat of the day had dissipated.

This was also my first experience of snorkeling over a coral reef.  The one surrounding Siar teemed with marine life and the colours of the fishes ad corals were simply breathtaking.

Giant clams and bright yellow and pink brain corals were in abundance.  Electric blue fish darted amongst them.  For someone reared on a diet of Jacques Cousteau undersea adventures back in New Zealand television, this was the real hting.

It was easy see why PNG is regarded as one of the world's great diving locations. In other coastal regions the diving is over sunken World War Two ships using scuba,

I shared my weekend on Siar with visitors from other parts of Niugini.  One was an anthropologist who was spending several months living on the island, studying the traditional ways of life.  It seemed at the time that most of the world's anthropology PhD students made a bee-line to PNG to complete their theses; the same applied for linguists, they were everywhere!

Potter - Madang

Smugglers Hotel in Madang was a renowned hideaway and I recall coming across the actor Michael York, who was then in his prime, enjoying a relaxing 'getting away from it all' holiday.

I took photographs in Madang which were later turned into postcards and sold commercially by a company in Port Moresby.  One of these images was of Smugglers.

Another postcard was of traditional Madang potters and their pottery.  The style and clay, which is a red earthenware, differs from the Zumin pottery of the Markham Valley.

Pottery is made on a small turning base without a wheel.  It is then handcoiled and beaten.

The detrius of the last war was still clearly visible in the surrounding jungles and some of the toughest fighting aginst the Japanese took place along this coast.  Old pieces of Marsden matting were still in use as make-shift fences and derelict aircraft were left to rot where they had crashed or been destroyed in battle.

War Wreckage - Madang

Japanese Artillery Piece

War Wreckage - Madang

The string bands of Madang and other coastal and island communities have a very haunting and repetitious rhythm.  One of the more distinctive instruments is an assemblage of hollow bamboo tubes, much like a xylophone, which are played by beating the top with a pair of rubber thongs (jandals).  They used guitar and close harmonies.




An example of bamboo percussion, although in this clip it is the Tatok Bamboo Band from the neighbouring Solomon islands (Bougainville)

These bands can also be heard entertaining in the bars of the major hotels such as Smugglers (mentioned above) and the much older Madang Resort hotel, which began as a German colonial guest house prior to World War One - 1914-18.

I stayed in the Madang Resort Hotel for a weekend when I was the Eastern Highlands chairman for the 1980 South Pacific Festival of Arts.  The organising committee met there under the chairmanship of Mali Voi and Helen Dennett.  Mali went on to become a UNESCO cultural expert based in Apia and Helen remained a world authority on traditional Sepik art.