Qualla: Madang and Morobe

Madang and Morobe: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. Manam Island has been erupting almost continuously since 2004. For years its ash plume was a semi-permanent feature of the Bismarck Sea skyline, tall enough to show on satellite images, and despite recurring evacuations the islanders have repeatedly moved back to live beneath it. That willingness to negotiate with a volcano tells you something about Madang and Morobe provinces. Together they occupy the north-eastern shoulder of New Guinea, more than 900,000 people spread across mountain ranges, river valleys, active calderas, and forest so dense that fifteen thousand plant species have been catalogued and no one is confident that is the final count.

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0

Madang and Morobe: Madang's Quiet Boast

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. Madang town has called itself the prettiest city in the South Pacific for a long time, and locals will tell you to take that with a grain of salt. But the harbour really is picturesque, the reefs really are close enough that you can dive from a dinghy, and the carvers working in ...

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0

Madang and Morobe: Living on the Ring of Fire

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. Volcanic islands scatter the coast north and west of Madang town. Karkar Island sits thirty kilometres offshore, an oval of fifty thousand people farming coconut and cocoa on fertile slopes that last erupted in 1978. Its two nested calderas still smoke faintly. The inner crater c...

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0

Madang and Morobe: Morobe's Working Coast

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. South across the provincial line sits Morobe, nearly 600,000 people organised around the Huon Gulf and the port city of Lae. Morobe has 171 languages on its own ledger. Tok Pisin, the English-based creole, holds them all together as the province's common tongue. Lae is the countr...

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0

Madang and Morobe: Tree Kangaroos and the Champagne Cork

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nomadtales, CC BY-SA 2.5. The Huon Peninsula juts northeast from Lae into the Solomon Sea. Geologists have called it the champagne cork because its mountains are still pushing up fast enough to measure. One of Papua New Guinea's seven species of tree kangaroo, the Matschie's, lives in those forests. To se...

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Image: Nomadtales | CC BY-SA 2.5

Madang and Morobe: The War Underfoot

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. You cannot spend long in these two provinces without the past coming up. Hansa Bay, on the Madang coast, holds the wrecks of thirty-five Japanese ships. The Black Cat Trail runs from Wau to Salamaua along the track gold prospectors used before the war. During World War II, some o...

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0