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.

Markham Moments

The first time I drove down the Markham Valley from the Eastern Highlands to Lae, I did so in a Toyota Corolla station wagon that I had purchased from a departing Expat who was going 'finis'.

The vehicle in question had been painted by the Goroka Tech. third year art and design students when, in a moment of generosity (or should that be weakness), I "donated" its surfaces to be a canvas for applied design.

The result was a handpainted wagon with brightly applied 'bilas' in a traditional PNG design.  There was nothing like it on the highway and the car attracted a lot of attention from the PMV's (Passenger Motor Vehicles) that plied their trade up and down the highway.

The other vivid recollection I have of this first journey in 1979 was that the Highlands Highway on the Markham Valley section had not yet been sealed, so the sensation of large undulating ruts and large potholes was quite unnerving.

Australian War Memorial 100546. Markham Valley,
New Guinea. 5 September 1943.Screened by dense smoke,
paratroopers of 503 US Paratroop Infantry Regiment
and gunners of 2/4th Australian Field Regiment with their
25 Pounders land unopposed at Nadzab,
during the advance of 7th Australian Division on Lae.

The Markham valley had been the scene of some fierce fighting on 5 September 1943, when US and Australian paratroopers dropped into it.

Their mission was to secure Nadzab airstrip in preparation for the Allies advance on Lae.  One paratrooper described exiting the plane as " like leaving an icebox and stepping into a furnace".

It was also unbearably hot in the valley when I traversed it and the only points of interest enroute were the traditional Zumim potteries found in the valley, with their wood fired and highly decorative cooking vessels.

The potting process is described thus:

Adhering to ancient tradition, the married, childless women of Zumim walk for ten miles to collect clay in secret from a special place, wrap it in banana leaves and walk the ten miles back to the village where, after a rest of a day, they will prepare it for use.

The clay is placed on a wet solid wooden board and beaten with a wet mallet until it spreads into a flat sheet. This is folded into a lump again and re flattened several times to remove impurities. 

When ready the clay is wrapped again in banana leaves and rested for several days before the skilled potters , the men take over forming the moistened clay in two long coils which they spiral around in a circular motion forming the new pot. The interior is then smoothed with a moistened piece of coconut shell. The upper rim is flattened with a paddle and decorations are etched on with fine silvers of bamboo and molded shapes can be applied which indicate the use for which the pot is made. 

Morobe dancers from Lae performing
at the Goroka Show.   Copyright Roger Smith

The pot will then be rested for a couple of weeks before being fired in several stages on open fires built under and over it. Pots are made ready for cooking or selling by firstly having yams or cooking bananas cooked in them in water until soft which seals the pot.

The embossed decorations on Zumim pottery, represent certain characteristics of nature. For example, the signs of a tracks of a mouse, the teeth of a lizard , a feather or seed pods. Pots with elaborate relief work of flying fox heads, birds and snakes are used for cooking meat and sometimes vegetables, whilst the plainer pots are used solely for cooking vegetables.

I bought a small zumim cooking pot which I kept for many years, eventually selling it in a NZ auction some twenty five years later.

Despite the challengs of of the Markham Valley the suspension of the station wagon held and the radiator did not boil on the return journey as we tackled the sharp incline from the valley floor, heading back towards Kainanatu.

I sold the station wagon shortly after this trek and purchased a Toyota short wheel base Landcruiser which was far better suited to the rough and off road conditions of the Highlands.

It was rumoured that less principled car owners wrote older cars off for insurance claim purposes by arranging for them to be 'stolen by rascals', or simply by finding a  convenient cliff face to push them off.  

The cost of repairs was often prohibitive and this sort of scam was I suspect not uncommon.