Qualla: Karkar Island https://qualla.com/karkar-island en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/p/p/v/karkar-island-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Karkar Island https://qualla.com/karkar-island Karkar Island: Introduction https://qualla.com/karkar-island/ Photo credit styko, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1979 an eruption on Karkar Island killed no locals. It killed the two volcanologists who had gone up to study it. Robin Cooke and Elias Ravian are still on the mountain somewhere, their deaths a reminder that this symmetrical green oval in the Bismarck Sea is an active stratovolcano with nested calderas and a habit of killing the people who look at it too closely. Seventy thousand people live on the outer slopes anyway, growing cacao and coconuts in the fine volcanic soil, sending their children to one high school, trusting the road that circles the island and the single hospital run by rotating German Lutherans.

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Image: styko | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/p/p/v/karkar-island-wp/rppv-karkar-island-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Karkar Island: A Nested Caldera https://qualla.com/karkar-island/ Photo credit Plaindrome, CC BY 3.0. From the air Karkar is an almost perfect oval, twenty-five kilometers long and nineteen wide, set seventy-four kilometers off the New Guinea coast across the Isumrud Strait. The symmetry is a lie. Inside the outer rim, a second caldera nests inside the first. Both were formed by ...

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Image: Plaindrome | CC BY 3.0

]]> Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/p/p/v/karkar-island-wp/rppv-karkar-island-a-nested-caldera.mp3 0:06 2 full Karkar Island: Waskia and Takia https://qualla.com/karkar-island/ Photo credit styko, CC BY-SA 3.0. The island has two indigenous languages and, remarkably, no serious conflict between them. Waskia is an Austronesian-adjacent Papuan language; Takia is an Oceanic Austronesian language. They evolved in proximity for so long that linguists study them as a case of intense mutual in...

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Image: styko | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/p/p/v/karkar-island-wp/rppv-karkar-island-waskia-and-takia.mp3 0:06 3 full Karkar Island: Cacao and Coconut https://qualla.com/karkar-island/ Photo credit Styko, CC BY-SA 3.0. Karkar's two main exports grow in the same soil, using the same labor, but at different elevations. Coconuts thrive on the lower slopes, where the salt air and the hot sun favor the palms. Cacao grows higher up, where it is cooler and wetter, under the shade of other trees. The p...

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Image: Styko | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/p/p/v/karkar-island-wp/rppv-karkar-island-cacao-and-coconut.mp3 0:06 4 full Karkar Island: A Hospital Run By Germans https://qualla.com/karkar-island/ Photo credit styko, CC BY-SA 3.0. Gaubin Hospital, known formally as the Edwin and Tabitha Tscharke Memorial Hospital, sits on the western shore of Karkar. It is operated by the Lutheran Health Service and staffed by a rotating group of German doctors who come for tours of six months or a year. The hospital train...

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]]> Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/p/p/v/karkar-island-wp/rppv-karkar-island-a-hospital-run-by-germans.mp3 0:06 5 full