The Western Province

The Western Province of Papua New Guinea is a beautiful, unspoiled and ALMOST inaccessible part of PNG (and the world, for that matter).

Nestled in the Southwest corner of PNG, The Western Province is populated by numerous villages, typically located along the banks of one of the many rivers such as the Fly River, the Aramea River, the Morehead River and the Bensbach River, among others.  Families commute from home to their riverside garden or to another village by dugout canoe, which takes 6 months to carve out of a log and only last 3 years.

Many villages can only be reached by water from the Gulf, up the river delta and then up river, although some rivers are navigable only in the wet season.  Some of the villages are accessible by plane, if they are fortunate enough to have a grass airstrip carved out of the bush. 

 

 

 

 

The Bensbach River is one such river with numerous villages (all with their individual unique language) along a 30 or so mile stretch of river benefitting, to a limited extent, from the single airstrip at Bensbach, where the Bensbach Wildlife Lodge is located. 

The Bensbach River flows and drains a diverse countryside ranging from tall forest jungles to vast flood plains that turn into huge lake at the peak of the wet season.  Each year, a couple hundred visitors come to the Bensbach Wildlife Lodge to explore and view the unique array of wild flora and fauna.  There are sixty or so varieties of tropical orchids, just for openers; some visitors come only to study the orchids that are found from ground level up into the forest canopy.

Other visitors come to see the astonishing wildlife- the seemingly unending numbers of Rusa deer, ranging from small groups to herds of hundreds.  As the dry season arrives, the deer come from the forests into the flood plain to graze on the fresh, fast-growing grasses of the flood plain and the reeds along the river banks and billabongs (swamps).  The deer often wade neck-deep in the water to graze on the most tender new shoots. But, delicious as the reeds may be, it is risky business as the waters are populated by saltwater crocodiles up to some six metres ( 20 feet) long, although I have only seen them about five metres (sixteen feet) long.  The crocs welcome the deer with open jaws, of course.

The birdlife has to be seen to be believed... many varieties of  herons, bitterns, hawks, ospreys, sea eagles, shags, anhingas, ducks, geese, particularly magpie geese in flocks of thousands, spoonbills, ibis, etc., etc.; this jabiru taking flight is typical.Jabiru in flight

The forest abounds in wildlife and flora too, including dangerous snakes, wild boar, tree kangaroos, wallabies,  and high in the canopy, are the cuscus.  In short, there are 1500 varieties of trees and 750 varieties of birds!

Many of the visitors are fishermen who come to Bensbach in search of huge wild Barramundi which thrive in these waters and after being caught are photographed and released. 

This was the main attraction for me, but also enabled me to visit the villages and see the village schools. These are mostly rickety structures made of saplings and walls of sheets of paperbark.  Typically the school classrooms often have no glass in the windows and certainly no mosquito screens, sometimes no desks or chairs, little by way of teaching materials, no electricity, aside from a few solar cells in the lucky schools.  There was little by way of mathematics teaching material, either.

Here's the local school classroom.