Kundus and garamut drums beat out dizzying rhythms in the sweet sticky heat. The sound of insects rings in the air, and frogs and geckos bark as night falls, silenced only bt a sudden deluge of tropical; rain. The vegetation surrounding you is on growth hormones-an overproductive superabundance of greenery. This is PNG, a raw, remarkably untamed land, filled with great mountain ranges, mighty rivers and stunning beaches, and five million people living much the way they have for thousands of years.

June to September is cooler, drier and takes in the majority of the provincial celebrations and Highlands sing sings

Standing atop snowflecked Mt Wilhelm on a clear morning, taking in both north and south coasts of the world’s second-biggest island Attending a Highlands sing to watch tens of thousands of people gather bedecked in bilas (finery) of bodt-paint, masks and headdresses of bird-of-paradise feathers Snorkelling over the teeming reef-life-millions of fish in impossible colours, giant clams, monster gropers and WWll shipwrecks Travelling up the mighty Sepik River into powerhouse of Pacific art Visiting the ghost town of Rabaul, buried in Tuvurvur’s volcanic ash

Read biologist Tim Flannery’s Throwim Way Leg, an account of his many field trips into the interior’s remotest parts in search of tree-kangaroos

Listen to Telek’s Serious Tam CD (Real World), showcasing the extraordinary voice and music of Rabaul’s most famous son

Watch Robin Anderson and Bob Connelly’s cinematic triptych First Contact, Joe Leahy’s Neighbours and Black Hervest, an outstanding exposition of Highlanders’ first encounters with the outside world and their emergence into modern times

Eat fresh fish, lobster and market gardeners’ produce

Drink SP Lager

Em nau! (fantastic! Right on !)

Penis-gourds; betel nut; sing singd; tropical islands; bilum bags; tribal art; laid-back ‘PNG time’; beautiful beaches; Kokoda Trail; Asaro mud men; yam worship; rascals

Women suckling pigs, umus (underground ovens), shell-money, shark-calling, ancestor worship, altitude sickness, birds-of paradise, bats

You raise your gaze a few degrees and you see the rim of the old caldera with its five volcanos, one still smoking, and you remember where you are. Beneath the earth under you feet there are made roads, a sewerage system, parks and ovals, but above that everything has been laid to waste. lt’s black at night and the unnerving quiet is only broken by the wind and the scavengers moving through its bones. Slowly, very slowly, people are coming back Rabaul.