Australasia

Alotau

Alotau on the mainland, less than 400 kilometres from the capital, Port Moresby, it's quite a civilised place, with conventional supermarkets (where we bought Australian wine); some nice houses and a good deal of traffic.

Alotau

The local adults seem a little put out by all the rather large, by comparison, white people flooding off a bigger than usual cruise ship but the children were treating it as a holiday and some wanted to chat. Their English is excellent - they learn it at school in place of or in addition to Tok Pisin (pidgin) the official lingua franca. Papua New Guinea has some 830 living languages plus English and Tok Pisin.

Two boys attached themselves to me. They each had a different home/family (One Tok) language but couldn't tell me what either is called in English.

This more traditional market, on the walk into town, was almost exclusively for betel nut.

Betel nut sellers

Many people here, as in PNG in general, use betel nut. Betel nut is an addictive stimulant drug that is said to increase stamina and alertness and induce a sense of well-being and euphoria. It also increases salivation, resulting in regular spitting of the red juice that stains the users' mouths and rots their teeth. Users take it with lime (calcium hydroxide) that is sold in bags by the vendors; mustard sticks (daka); and sometimes chewing tobacco.

Alotau is on Milne Bay, made famous by World War 2.

The battle of Milne Bay

The Milne Bay War Memorial

The battle of Milne Bay is remembered as the first defeat of the Japanese on land during the Pacific War.

In May 1942 a Japanese force was landed up the coast to take the strategic allied air base near here. The highly skilled and battle hardened Japanese, who had recently taken Singapore against insufficiently trained and inexperienced British and Australian troops, were initially successful. It was a fine demonstration that if you have an army it needs to have battle experience - a sword grows rusty in the scabbard.  The 'Peter Principle' (people are promoted until they are found to be incompetent and then there they sit) gets to work, particularly amongst the officers.

But this time, the now more experienced Australian defenders, with some US participation, retained air superiority and were better prepared. Although reinforced, the Japanese lost almost a third of their troops and were forced to withdraw. It was the beginning of the end for them.

The school

We had booked a ship sponsored bus tour that, later in the day, showed us around the town and to a school.

As I previously mentioned, the children meeting the boat were multilingual and apparently literate. So education at least to primary level appears to be good.

Kwoto Mission School
The dancers were there because we were
There was also a performance by the school choir - introduced by senior students
not unlike a Primary School in Australia

At the Mission School there was the ubiquitous dance group. In addition there were speeches and singing by the school children - at least the ones not playing truant.

I was struck by how self effacing (perhaps timid around Europeans) these kids were compared to Australian kids the same age.

The bus took us up to this lookout where guides gave a commentary
and some local people dressed up for us tourists - working for tips
I felt sorry for this guy - his heart wasn't in it but the kid was charming

Back down the hill we were dropped off at a larger food (growers) market - more food that the previous one - but again lots of betel nut and bags of lime to go with it

The growers market
as mentioned earlier there are also several conventional (unremarkable) supermarkets in town

Off to sea again

All at sea again

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