Qualla: Alotau

Alotau: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sonia.Liao116, CC BY-SA 4.0. The town has never wanted the highway. For decades, successive Papua New Guinea governments have floated the idea of connecting Alotau by road to Port Moresby, 200-odd miles to the west over mountains and swamps and the tangled geography of the southern coast. The proposal keeps dying. The people of Alotau keep voting it down, politely, and then getting on with their day. The reasons depend on who you ask. Some cite the rascal problem in the capital - the urban crime that has made Port Moresby difficult to live in. Others, more honestly, say they like the quiet. You arrive by air at Gurney Airport, named for a young Australian fighter pilot killed here in 1942, and the town you walk into is the one Alotau intends to keep being.

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Image: Sonia.Liao116 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Alotau: The Gateway Nobody Paves

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Uncredited, likely Billy Hancock, a pearl trader resident of the Trobriand Islands, who died before 1929 [1]., Public domain. Alotau sits on the north shore of Milne Bay, at the head of an enormous natural harbor - the same protected anchorage that made this place strategically priceless during the Second World War. Today the harbor is full of coastal freighters and banana boats, and the town strings it...

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Image: Uncredited, likely Billy Hancock, a pearl trader resident of the Trobriand Islands, who died before 1929 [1]. | Public domain

Alotau: Walking and DimDim

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit E.3, CC0. The best way to see Alotau is on foot. The town is not large, the people are friendly, and the children tend to call out "DimDim" at passing foreigners, which Wikivoyage notes gently: it does not mean they think you are stupid. DimDim is simply the local word for outsider, a noun...

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Image: E.3 | CC0

Alotau: The Market and the Betel

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RedSolution, Public domain. At the Alotau market, down near the water, the fresh food is excellent most days of the week - bananas, sweet potatoes, yams, greens, green beans, and seafood including crabs. Saturday afternoons are slow. Sundays are slower still; the market essentially closes. What does not clo...

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Image: RedSolution | Public domain

Alotau: A Dive Shop with No Customers

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Christian James/AusAID, CC BY 2.0. The diving off Alotau is, by the accounts of those who have done it, fantastic. The reefs of Milne Bay are among the most biodiverse in the world, with muck diving sites that marine biologists travel from three continents to photograph. And yet Alotau gets few visitors. The town'...

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Image: Christian James/AusAID | CC BY 2.0

Alotau: Going Next

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Manuel Hetzel, CC BY-SA 3.0. What Alotau offers best is onward passage. A short boat ride puts you on Samarai, the old colonial capital, which you can walk around in twenty minutes - a boom town in the 19th century with five hotels to serve gold prospectors, now mostly quiet, still worth the trip. Fergusson ...

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Image: Manuel Hetzel | CC BY-SA 3.0