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Monday, 13 August 2007

Journey to the highlands...

DAY 5: Hilans Hiway

Tom had picked me up at Unitech about 9.30 so we could make an early start on the road to Mt Hagen. As we drove out of Lae I notice that the drought has damaged the coconut palms lining the road. "Its effect has been patchy", says Tom. "In some places it is bad, in others it is not". We will see more of this patchiness on our journey into the mountains. Some valleys remain verdant, others dry and scorched by fire.

We are driving through the Markham Valley, the yellow grasslands of which are somehow familiar. It is a bit like the grazing country you find in Australia, I think.

"There's an old airstrip from the war", Tom says as he points to our left. I look and see nothing but long grass but, yes, there... a wide strip of concrete in the process of being overgrown... an old military airstrip. Such artifacts are not uncommon in this country, leftovers from that ferocious conflict that pitted a few poorly equipped Australians against Imperial Japan's military might.

We drive on and the road swings left over a bridge spanning a wide river, the waters of which have incised deeply into the far bank. A litle further and we stop at a village. "We'll pick up some people I know here. They live in the highlands and they will be our security against raskols", he explains. Soon the tray of the utility is filled with a half-dozen frizzy-haired highlanders. We set off again.

"That wreckage", Tom says, pointing to debris beside a bridge we cross slowly, "was the bridge that was blown up by local landowners in a land dispute". I have heard that highlanders are a wild bunch. Now I believe that they really do take matters into their own hands.

The hiway

The Hilans Hiway is a roller-coaster strip of all-weather gravel that traverses the ridges and descends the valleys of the PNG Central Highlands. Maybe Tom has made me a bit paranoid with his stories of the highland raskol danger, and how they once climbed aboard a moving truck and relieved it of its cargo, but soon the countryside takes my attention. The further you go, the more rugged it becomes.

Goroko is one of the main settlements along the hiway, a large town. It is also a centre of the highlands coffee industry and today the villagers who grow the coffee have brought it to town. Here, they line the road to sell sackloads of beans to the processors who roast the stuff. Eventually, it ends up on the overseas market. We see plantations near the villages we pass... coffee bushes growing below tall Casuarina trees that protect and provide them with nutrients. In Mt Hagen, we will visit a friend of Tom's who owns a coffee processing plant.

The further along the Hiway we drive, gaining altitude, the closer to the ground the huts are built. In Lae, houses are usually raised in the style familiar from other Pacific Island coastal settlements. But up here they are built on the ground and, unlike the rectangular coastal houses, they are round. It is all about staying warm, Tom explains, because the nights can be cold at these altitudes.

Checkpoint

The minibus is stopped by the side of the road and people stand around. Has it broken down, I wonder? Tom has already explained that you do not stop to help break-downs on the Hilans Hiway because they might be traps set by raskols.

We leave the bus in our dust plume as Tom speeds past but as we look back, curious to see why it has stopped, a figure wearing a blue uniform shirt and bandishing a military rifle steps out. He is waving at us. We reverse back and discover that the minibus has stopped because this is a police checkpoint. Twelve or so police are milling around, their dress a blend of military and police uniform, jeans and thongs, their weapons Heckler & Koch assault rifles, one or two AR16s and a couple pump action shotguns.

They look in the utility to check that we are carrying no alcohol, firearms of drugs. I offer to open my pack for them but they decline. This is the second checkpoint we have envountered. Up here it is 'dry' country where alcohol is banned in an attempt to stem violence.

Into the Wahgi Valley

Over a rise and suddenly there's a splendid vista of the Wahgi Valley, a wide bowl of settlement and farm, tea plantation and vegetable garden surrounded by mountains now a deepish blue in the late afternoon light. Here, tea plantations have replaced coffee as the cash crop.

It is still 20 or so kilometers to Mt Hagen. We have just set out on the first asphalt since the Markham Valley when we make an unexpected stop. "We've got a blowout", exclaims Tom.

We enter Mt Hagen as the light starts to fade.