Qualla: Voco Point https://qualla.com/voco-point 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/q/b/9/voco-point-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Voco Point https://qualla.com/voco-point Voco Point: Introduction https://qualla.com/voco-point/ Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name is a fossil. Voco Point takes its odd title from the Vacuum Oil Company, a pre-World War I American fuel outfit that ran a depot here when the British had not yet handed New Guinea to Australia and nobody expected an airline industry at all. Vacuum Oil would eventually rebrand as Mobil. The depot is long gone. But the name stuck to this little nub of Lae coastline, where coastal freighters still tie up and the busiest sea trade in Papua New Guinea runs its quiet daily business. Locals have their own name for the area, older than any oil company: Asiawi - a point, they say, that the evil spirit Yaayaa once bit off and made shorter than it used to be.

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/b/9/voco-point-wp/rqb9-voco-point-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Voco Point: Where the Boats Come From https://qualla.com/voco-point/ Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. Stand at the Voco Point wharves on a busy morning and the scale of Papua New Guinea becomes something you can count in hulls. Passenger boats and small freighters line up to run routes that would take weeks to drive, even if there were roads. Ships bound for Finschhafen, 80 kilom...

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/b/9/voco-point-wp/rqb9-voco-point-where-the-boats-come-from.mp3 0:06 2 full Voco Point: The President and the B-26 https://qualla.com/voco-point/ Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the morning of 9 June 1942, eleven B-26 Marauders from the U.S. 22nd Bomb Group lifted off from Port Moresby and turned north across the Owen Stanley Range toward Lae. The mission was called TOW 9. Aboard one of the aircraft, Heckling Hare, sat a 33-year-old Texan congressman ...

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/b/9/voco-point-wp/rqb9-voco-point-the-president-and-the-b-26.mp3 0:06 3 full Voco Point: Mount Lunaman https://qualla.com/voco-point/ Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. At 96 meters, Mount Lunaman is not quite a hill - but in the flat delta country of Lae it is tall enough to matter. The Germans who ran this coast before 1914 called it Fortress Hill. Locals call it Lo' Wamung, first hill. The Japanese, during their occupation of Lae from 1942 to...

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/b/9/voco-point-wp/rqb9-voco-point-mount-lunaman.mp3 0:06 4 full Voco Point: The Sea Takes Back https://qualla.com/voco-point/ Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. Voco Point sits on a precarious shelf. The continental drop-off falls away steeply just offshore, and every fifty years or so a chunk of the point simply slides into the depths. In the mid-1950s the entire wading pool at Stewart Park - a concrete basin of shallow water the kids o...

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/b/9/voco-point-wp/rqb9-voco-point-the-sea-takes-back.mp3 0:06 5 full Voco Point: Everyday Working Coast https://qualla.com/voco-point/ Photo credit Phenss, CC BY-SA 3.0. Between the wharves and Mount Lunaman runs Chinatown, a neighborhood established when German colonials brought Chinese boatbuilders and carpenters to Lae and Rabaul before World War I. Trading stores still operate there. At the base of the hill, the 68th Australian Women's Army S...

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Image: Phenss | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/b/9/voco-point-wp/rqb9-voco-point-everyday-working-coast.mp3 0:06 6 full