*Map of the Region showing our heading* - Google map link

Alotau, Papua New Guinea

Whoo hoo, we are out of the Coral Sea, it’s much calmer, the sun is shining and Kelly is feeling much better.

This morning we are heading for the town of Alotau. It’s the capital of Milne Bay Province, and is nestled on the edge of the bay named by Captain Moresby in 1873 after Lord Milne of the British Navy. Alotau means “Bay of Views” in Suau language.

Our ETA to Alotau is 13:00 hours so there is time for a bit of brekkie and a couple of lectures before we arrive.

It’s great to see Kelly up and about again and we both head off to breakfast looking forward to a great day. By the time we get to breakfast the tables are filling up quickly and we see our first glimpse of Papua New Guinea.

We have sailed from the Coral Sea to the Solomon Sea and are passing Sideia Island in the Louisiade Archipelago. The weather has cleared completely and the clouds just tower over the shoreline.

Peter Eastway’s first presentation started at 09:30 hours, and he gave an amazing overview of his work and presented a slideshow that gave us an insight into how he created his vision of what he saw when taking a photograph using Adobe Photoshop. It was inspiring, and I can’t wait to apply similar techniques to my photography.

Not long after Peter had finished, Mark gave a presentation on the Battle of Milne Bay. This area is significant to Australia as several battles were fought and legends created in this region, none more known than the story of Kokoda. At Milne Bay, Japanese marines attacked the Australian base on 25 August 1942, and fighting continued until the Japanese retreated on 5 September 1942. The battle was significant as it was the first in the Pacific campaign in which Allied troops decisively defeated Japanese land forces, forcing them to withdraw and completely abandon their strategic objective.

Around lunchtime, we sighted Alouta, and at approximately 13:00 hours, we berthed at the dock in Alotua. There was a lot of interest in our arrival from the dock as well as from local kids paddling out and circling the ship in their outrigger canoes.

There were, however, a couple of guys who didn’t really seem all that interested in our arrival.

The dock itself seems to be mainly used for loading Copra as we could see inside the dock buildings large stacks of bags containing Copra and smell the distinctive coconut aroma in the air. Copra is the dried meat, or kernel, of the coconut. Coconut oil extracted from it has made copra an important agricultural commodity for many coconut-producing countries.

During an Orion cruise, you can usually select from a number of Shoreside expeditions. Kelly and I had decided that we wanted to do the Bat Cave Adventure. Hell, as a Sydneysider, we have an affinity for the little guys, and any description that says you are going to get dirty and down in bat guano has to be fun.

Our tour was due to start about half an hour after we docked. After a couple of shabby-looking four-wheel drives arrived on the dock, we disembarked.

The expedition team briefs the group every night before arriving at a new destination. When they discussed the Bat Cave, they showed a picture of a large furry spider and said they were present in the cave. Half a dozen people changed their minds after that and signed on for the History Tour instead. I envisioned something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the guy’s back is covered in hairy Tarantulas.

Well, I’m sure we’d survive, so Kelly and I piled into one of the vehicles, and Mark, an expedition member, and a few others got into the other one and off we went. Of course, as soon as we are off the ship, it starts to rain again, but this we discover is pretty standard for this part of the world: sunshine in the morning, rain in the afternoon.

We head out of town in our convoy, with our vehicle in the lead. We pass the market and the local fishing boats on the way out.

The ride out of town is pretty good; it’s a bituminised road with a few potholes that we have to navigate around and lots of friendly locals waving to us as we pass. Every so often, these little roadside huts are a bit like the Papua New Guinea versions of 7-Eleven’s. I like the Pidgin “Winim LCD TV” on the Maggi posters.

As we head further out of town, we pass through a huge Palm Oil plantation.

According to our driver, this used to be a Coconut plantation but was cleared for Palm Oil because the return is much better. As you drive through, large piles of seeds wait to be collected.

After about 20 minutes our driver pulls over, turns around and heads back to town. He tells us that the other vehicle has broken down, and he needs to go back and see if they are okay. After about 10 minutes we are almost halfway back and there has been no sign of them, suddenly he pulls over and turns around again. Apparently, they were only about a minute behind us when they broke down, and our guy just drove straight by them. So we got to see the Palm Oil plantation all over again.

After meeting up with the other vehicle, which now seems okay, we kept going. After another 10 minutes, we turned off the main road onto a jungle track.

It seemed like we travelled along this track up and down hills for another 10 minutes until we pulled into a small clearing to be met by our guide, who we found out was named Roger.

Roger was very happy to see us, and we headed off into the bush to the Bat Cave with some other local guys. I thought we would climb up for some reason, but we went into a valley instead. By this time the rain had eased off but it was damn humid and every thing was slippery so by the time we made it to the mouth of the cave we were hot and exhausted.  

Getting into the cave was another experience, basically it was a matter of sliding down on your butt, watching out you didn’t smack your head on the overhanging rock. All the time, we were looking out for these large furry spiders we’d been told about.

By the time we had all made it into the first part of the cave, we were all sporting examples of bat guano on parts of our bodies, mainly our butts! The guides provided us with as many flashlights as they had. I missed out, but at least Kelly had one, and we headed into the cave.

Now I thought the cave would be cool and a bit refreshing after the humidity outside, but no, it was just as humid if not more inside. The floor of the caves was sort of squishy and consisted of compacted bat guano deposited over the years. I have to say the Adventure side was a bit of a letdown. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun to do, but the large furry spiders, well, we never saw one. We saw many cockroaches, a couple of frogs, a spindly spider and some very elusive bats.

After about an hour in the cave, we climbed back out. Coming back out was a bit easier than going in, and by the time we had all made it back up to the top of the hill where the vehicles waited for us, we were pretty beat and a sorry-looking lot, except for Roger. He looked pretty dry, clean, calm and collected.

We thanked Roger and the other guys, got back in the vehicles, and headed back to Orion. We were looking forward to a shower and getting out of our bat-guano-splattered clothes and boots.

Just clean again, and Captain Frank comes over to the ship's public address system to let us know that a team of Papuan New Guinea cultural dancers will perform for us on deck 6 at 17:00 hours.

We grab our cameras and head up to see what will be the first of many cultural presentations on the trip. The dancers and singers were fantastic, the costumes amazing and it was a welcome to Papua New Guinea we would never forget.

After the welcome, we thanked them all personally, and as they left the ship, Captain Frank prepared to undock the Orion, and it wasn’t long before we were sailing out of Aloutau as the sun set, off to our next destination, Samarai and Kwato Islands.

We finished the night with a Seafood Extravaganza out on deck in the Delphinus Lounge, tired but elated with our first day in Papua New Guinea.

Day #4 New Guinea Adventure

Tony Redhead