Qualla: Morobe Province

Morobe Province: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. There are 101 languages spoken in Morobe Province, and that is a conservative count. You can fly from Lae, the provincial capital on the Huon Gulf, up the Markham Valley, and every settlement below you may speak a tongue that will not be understood in the next valley over. The province covers 33,705 square kilometers of coast, delta, mountain range, and jungle, and holds 674,810 people by the 2011 census, making it the most populous province in Papua New Guinea. In the urban centers you will hear English and Tok Pisin. In remote villages near the old German plantations, you will still hear the pidgin traces of German words tangled into the local speech. The map calls it Morobe. The people who live here call it many other things.

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Morobe Province: Adolfhafen, or Post

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. The province takes its name from a former German administrative post called Morobe, southeast of Lae. Under German rule in the late nineteenth century, the settlement was Adolfhafen, named for Adolph von Hansemann of the German New Guinea Company and the German word hafen, meanin...

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0

Morobe Province: The Campaign

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1942 the Japanese took Lae and Salamaua and built them into major supply bases. For the next year and a half, Morobe was the main theater of the New Guinea war. The Salamaua-Lae campaign began on 22 April 1943 with an Australian attack on Japanese positions near Mubo and ended...

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0

Morobe Province: The Land Remembers

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit various, Public domain. The terrain is why the war took so long and why the province now takes so many languages. The Huon Peninsula juts east into the sea. The Markham River drops from the Finisterre Range 180 kilometers to the Huon Gulf. The Saruwaged Range, rising above 4,000 meters, closes off the p...

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Image: various | Public domain

Morobe Province: Gold and Coffee

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. Economy in Morobe has always been about what the land will yield. In 1970, mineral exports made up a mere one percent of Papua New Guinea's total exports. Within two years, that figure had risen to fifty-five percent. The old gold fields at Wau, which birthed the Black Cat Track ...

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0

Morobe Province: The View From Lae

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. Stand at the edge of Lae and look up the Markham Valley, and you are looking at the easiest road into the highlands from the eastern coast, which is why armies and prospectors and missionaries have all followed it. Look south and you see the ridges of the Huon Peninsula rising in...

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0