29th October 2016 - Towsville to Hobart by air - Misima Island day (PNG, Louisiades)

Saturday 29^th October 2016

It takes a long time to fly from Townsville to Hobart…Many stops, just long enough for a wee and a drink.  Townsville to Brisbane, Brisbane to Melbourne, Melbourne to Hobart.  2XS will stay in Breakwater Marina, in the capable hands of…Captain Michael!

Misima Island Day

Nancy from Misima Island

For my birthday Pete managed to wrangle a car for the day.  He just walked up to a likely looking bloke (Stanley Jack) and asked him.  Stanley said, basically, “Leave it with me.”  We went for a stroll up the road, to the airport, past the new jail, which is due to be opened in October with due ceremony.  

At the moment badboys are locked up in some grim-looking cells off the police station.  The new place looks much more pleasant.

Stanley Jack

There isn’t much crime, in Misima.  Or rather, there WASN’T much crime.  A few months ago the little town was invaded by twelve very bad badboys from Alotau, in three banana boats (motorised dinghies, very speedy.)  They were all armed and they made everybody lie down.  They targeted the two Asian-owned shops (Korean and Chinese) and were very rude and racially abusive to the owners while ransacking and vandalising both shops.  They also, very prudently, stole two big containers of fuel so they wouldn’t run out on their long ride home.

So now all of the local businesses, with a deep sigh, are fortifying their properties, with high mesh fences topped with razor wire.  It all looks very horrid, and Pete thinks badboys will be able to make their way through these fences very easily anyway, with boltcutters and bad intentions.

We had a nice chat at the airport with the lone employee, a nice boy from Rossell island, who was very happy when we told him we would go there in a few weeks – it will be our last stop before we reach Australian waters.  And then brrm brrm, there was a nice big solid four wheel drive twin-cab ute, with Stanley Jack at the wheel, ready for us to take over.  It was a great car, big and solid with aircon, and a very nice never-ending sound track emanating from – radio? CD? We never could find the source, but we did enjoy it.

Kevin from Rossell, wearing my sunglasses.  Later when we went to the airport to pick up Michael,
I gave him some of my spares...he was very happy!

There was more road on Misima Island than we expected.  From the sea it looks impenetrable with steep mountains dropping right down into the sea, and big cliffs, rocky unwelcoming shores.  But on land it was all quite different, much more mellow.  And much more populated!  We hardly ever travelled more than a kilometre before coming across a sizeable village.  The villages were all beautiful – neat and tidy, all made from stems and twigs and logs.

There is clearly a population explosion on the island.  There were children EVERYWHERE!  And most of them have never seen a dimdim (white person) or so we assumed from their reaction…

All of the women carry THINGS on their head.  All manner of things, light and heavy.  I asked permission to take photos of some of them, and they were thrilled to oblige.

We slowed down near a village in an idyllic beach setting, where I was just amazed and delighted to see three little tots carrying baskets on their heads.  I stopped to ask what they were carrying, and one of their mothers said, very proudly, that they carry gravel from the beach up to the village, to make pathways.  The children are very young – maybe ranging in age from 3-5, and they take their work very seriously indeed.

On Mioko Island we were amazed to see lots of children with golden blond hair.  

On Misima lots of them had glorious RED hair!

On the way back from the north coast we picked up several ute loads of school children, on their way back to their villages from an inter-school competition.  They piled into the tray, shouting WAIT!  WAIT! until there wasn’t room for another body.  And then they would drop off and disappear, into the jungle, or into their villages, with a cheery shout as we drove off.  (We were going SLOWLY!) 

Several miles from town (Bagaoia) we picked up a very pleasant man, who had given us some information on our way north.  He was still ambling along, quite happily, but was very glad to get a ride.  It was getting late, and dark and he had hours of walking ahead of him.  He had gone to visit his mother and obviously couldn’t afford the bus fare…We discovered that he is a senior teacher at the secondary school, as is his wife.  Teachers are very badly paid in PNG.  The schools are bearing the brunt of some brutal new government policies.  Many of the boarding students have had to be sent home to their far-flung islands because the schools can’t afford to feed them, and the parents have no money at all.

Mishima Guest House as razor wire goes up

We delivered the car back to Stanley Jack and took ourselves off to the boat for a nice G&T and a bit of a rest before our next adventure – dinner at the Guest House.  We had made a booking, and we were the only dinner guests.  We took our seats and within minutes a series of foil-covered dishes had appeared before us – an iced cake, pumpkin cooked in coconut, taro and sweet potato, fried chicken legs, greens.  

My birthday cake

All very festive.  We walked back down into town to the wharf, and were greeted by happy people, all asking how I had enjoyed my birthday… And the next morning, various random strangers asked me if my birthday dinner had been a success.  It would NOT be possible to live a clandestine life, on Misima Island…