"The Admiralty Islands" a Lorengau Travel Page by Bwana_Brown

It gets a bit repetitious saying that the Admiralty Islands are a 'remote' destination. However, given that the country of Papua New Guinea itself is rather 'remote', there were a lot of small places in it's far corners that were even more remote! This chain of islands, comprising almost the most northerly part of PNG, are located in the Bismarck Sea, only 2 degrees south of the Equator, and includes over 200 individual islands. By far the largest of these is Manus Island, consisting mostly of limestone and covered with tropical jungles. The present-day population of 43,000 people has almost doubled since I was there, but Lorengau still remains the chief port and administrative centre for the Islands.

The population of Pacific Melanesian people speak 30 different languages, as well as the more common ones of English, 'Pidgen' English and Motu, allowing the tribes to communicate with each other. Europeans first discovered this group of islands in 1616 when Dutch explorer Willem Schonten stumbled upon them. However, it was not until New Guinea became a German protectorate in 1884 that Europeans in some sort of numbers began to take notice of the place. After World War I, the League of Nations awarded the islands to Australia (1920) as a Mandated Territory, until Papua New Guinea itself became an independent nation in 1975.

I made a 3-day trip to these islands, about 2-years into my 3-year stay in PNG, as another one of my fact-finding/repair trips into all the little generating stations that the PNG Electricity Commission was responsible to keep operating. Please see my 'General' tip for a map showing the location of the Admiralty Islands in relation to the rest of PNG.