As a travel writer with nearly three decades of experience, I’m often asked what my favourite destination is. My reflex answer is Papua New Guinea, which can easily be extended to Melanesia more generally.
While this question is still being asked of me, I now feel the necessity to analyse my response further. Considering that with many of the destinations I visit, once I’m done, I don’t always feel a strong urge to return. So, just what is it about Melanesia that so calls me back?
To answer that question, I have to look back to my childhood and the Encyclopædia Britannica set my parents bought nearly 70 years ago. In that collection was a massive atlas with pastel-coloured political maps and tables of incomprehensible data that so fascinated me during my impressionable preteens. Poring over those maps, I fantasised about one day visiting as many of these countries as possible.
Fast forward half a century, and those now obsolete, dusty Britannicas still line the shelf, but my zest for travel and exploration is still alive and well. Enter expedition cruising, the 21st century’s modern equivalent of frontier travel, albeit in shameful comfort and luxury. It is this breakthrough in commercial vacationing that has opened the more inaccessible parts of the world to regular folks like myself looking to avoid the overtourism crush and helping them satisfy the inner Attenborough in so many of us.
Papua New Guinea, the closest country to Australia, delivers satisfying expedition travel in spades, especially aboard the growing fleet of small expedition vessels now proliferating on our oceans. And with so many isolated islands and communities in the Solomon and Bismarck Seas, PNG and Melanesia are ideally placed to deliver this experience in spades.
“PNG is one of the few places on earth where luxury and genuine authenticity not only coexist but actually reinforce each other,” Mick Fogg, a person of enormous experience in this area, once told me. Fogg is now General Manager and Head of Sustainability at Pearl Expeditions.
My most recent voyage was with the comparatively new cruise line, Swan Hellenic, and I’m pleased to say they more than lived up to the high benchmark I have set for operators in this region.
My itinerary, Wild Eden of Papua New Guinea, began in the Solomon Islands and wound up in Indonesian West Papua, via Bougainville aboard the sparkling-new vessel SH Minerva, a 150-passenger cruise ship especially designed for remote-destination work.
“The dozens of rarely visited islands with authentic, welcoming traditional villages remain untouched by modern tourism,” Swan Hellenic’s Expedition Operations Manager, Jane Wilson, tells me, “all with a backdrop of spectacular volcanoes cloaked in rainforest, fringed by beaches and surrounded by coral reefs make Melanesia an irresistible destination.“
Even with a Category 5 cyclone hot on our heels, the team were able to deliver outstanding shore excursions at every stop. Villagers at these tiny outposts turned out in force, dressed to the nines in traditional costumes, singing and dancing up a storm. At the larger port of Madang, a mini-festival was organised with troupes from hundreds of kilometres away converging to deliver a staggering array of cultural performances. On top of that, we were able to indulge our passion for tribal art with the many superbly skilled craftspeople displaying their stunning wares at ridiculously low prices.
Military history is another drawcard to PNG and, apart from the famous Kokoda Track, there is plenty to see at places like Rabaul, where the Japanese once maintained a massive WWII base.
Away from the coastal communities, the Highlands offer yet more variety, with areas around Mt Hagen, Goroka and the Waghi Valley famous for their vivid cultural festivals.
Yes, it’s true, expedition cruising is not cheap. Whether you choose a polar or tropical voyage, fares around $1000/day per person are typical, so many travellers view this as a “once in a lifetime” experience, and if you ask me, it’s worth every penny.
You can read more of Rod’s expedition cruising exploits at his website: www.expeditioncruising.com.
