A Year in Papua New Guinea

A sunset recently - carefully cropped to avoid ugly razor-wire and buildings. On return from New Ireland we prepared for a week of training. NARI staff from Aiyura Highlands Regional Centre came down to Lae and were joined by a few from NARI Port Moresby, the Coconut Industry Board in Madang and PNG Biosecurity folk from Lae, Port Moresby and Rabaul. With colleague Boney Wera we ran Scientific Writing, Spreadsheet Basics, Experimental Design and Data Analysis, Soft Skills and Leadership and Supervisory skills. The shuffling of people through the available accommodation sadly meant that a few people couldn't do everything they wanted. Otherwise it went well with lots of positive feedback. The NARI guesthouse, drivers and catering staff do a great job. Me delivering Scientific Writing training. You haven't done the training unless you have a certificate to prove it.  You can pick the trainers as they are the ones without certificates. Following that we geared up for the 2026 Food...

View to the west from Ral Island. We went to old Ireland in 2005 so we took the opportunity to visit New Ireland recently. You might wonder why this tropical paradise is named after cold, sodden (but beautiful) Ireland. In this part of the world we have New Guinea, New Ireland, New Britain, New Hanover, New Zealand, New South Wales, New Caledonia, New Georgia, New Holland (now Australia) and it is hard to see what reminded people of the original places (except maybe Guinea). A typical scene in New Ireland - a coastal village with banana boat. Mitchell and Webb had a take on this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfUInbMnHbI Getting to New Ireland from Lae involves two flights going and three coming back as the Port Moresby flight stops at Manus on the way back. I must say that our recent experiences with Air New Guinea have been faultless. Great job team! We stayed at the lovely Nusa Island Retreat , a quick banana boat ride across the channel from the capital - Kavieng, and can th...

Friday afternoon session at our mess. Scanning the trees for any sign of birds  while having a couple of glasses of red. Since returning from East New Britain we have been trying to organise more training and a holiday (or two).  We still need to deliver our training programs to the NARI staff at Aiyura (near Goroka) and Tambul (near Mt. Hagen). Our security restrictions here mean that we can't drive up to Aiyura (as all other NARI staff do) and Mt. Hagen is a major problem even if we flew up there. We have made several suggestions to NARI and AV management but the solution we have settled on is to run the training here over a couple of weeks and bring staff down to us. The next problem is when. The accommodation here is booked for several weeks so the earliest we can fit our training in is the third week of June and the second week of July. With not much else happening we decided to use some of our leave. I found a well-regarded lodge near Mt. Hagen and we applied for permiss...