Rather then return to Brisbane we opted to re-enter Oz through Cairns and it took just a couple of small plane adventures to deliver us back into the hands of Australian officials. In a moment of Deb B shopping madness, I had picked up a huge carving during our Sepik River travels, largely because it seemed to be such a good bargain. It's much too big to be easily carried through the rest of our travels, we don't even have a house to display it in, and to...

First impressions of Madang? There was certainly a lot less razor wire and a few brave glass windows even decorated the streetscape. Security guards were still highly visible but we even managed to snag a free ride from the dock to the hotel with a couple of them inside what passed for an armoured vehicle. I think we're going to like it here!The first order of business was to wash away the grime of our freighter journey with a swim in the pool. It was then th...

After days on the Sepik River there's no way I was going back to the Airport Lodge in Wewak to clean up for our trip to Madang so we stayed at the Talio Lodge. The enterprising dude who owned this facility had pimped out a number of shipping containers that you would normally find dockside or on an ocean traveling freighter. Never having slept in a shipping container before this seemed to be something of a must-do. The attached restaurant (made from a much bi...

Some scene-setting is required if you are to fully understand the joys of spending a night at the Airport Lodge in Wewak. The front reception area has been long abandoned in much the same way a retreating army gives up it's more vulnerable territory in favour of the more defensible high ground- in this case locked offices in the back. In a prelude of what was to come we were shown to the Margaret room, which presumably was the best of the bunch named, as it w...

We had met a couple from Germany while attending the festival who were trying to put together a few days on the Sepik river so we arranged to join them if we could find transport to Wewak. This proved difficult as the only way to reach Wewak was via air and the exodus after the festival had chewed up all of the available seats. We did contact MAF, the airline run by missionaries in PNG, and while they did not fly according to any schedule, they were "thinking" ab...