A Year in Papua New Guinea

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...

View across Blanche Bay towards Rabaul and the Mount Tavurvur volcano. Last week Jenny and I went to Port Moresby to deliver our training programs to NARI staff from Loloki Research Centre, the Chemistry Labs and the Insect Collection. It was all a bit chaotic and we never knew exactly who was going to turn up. We had good numbers and I even had to put on my Scientific Writing course a second time. We stayed the week at The Sanctuary Hotel which is fine but the menu has become a bit unexciting so we had a couple of dinners elsewhere. We had Friday off so we were able to pop into the AV office to collect Jenny's passport which had been with PNG Immigration getting a Visa extension. We also visited a big supermarket for a few treats and the huge Theodist store (think OfficeWorks). We have a Theodist in Lae but it is small. Jenny running Leadership training at Loloki. Organised chaos at Port Moresby domestic terminal. On Saturday we flew to East New Britain. The queue at the Port More...

The forest behind our village has nearly disappeared under the clouds. Since Christmas there has been little rain - just enough to keep things looking green but nothing like the rain we had back when we first arrived. Things began to change a month or so ago however with storms most evenings and the occasional rainy night. Last Monday the wind changed the clouds rolled in and it was actually, almost chilly. Since then it has hardly stopped raining. This is welcome but brings with it some problems. Infrastructure is strained, landslips become a risk and the cooler weather increases the number of fires that people have and increases the number of burns victims presenting at the public hospital in town (according to fellow volunteer Laura who is a nurse in the emergency department there). Our normal view out over the mountains to our south. The same view on Saturday morning. As a birder I know that such a change in season triggers movement by many bird species. We are surrounded by mounta...