50 Fun Facts About Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea shares its only land border with which country?

Indonesia controls the western half of the island of New Guinea; Australia and the Solomon Islands are neighbours only across the water.

What is the capital of Papua New Guinea?

It sits in a rain shadow on the south coast and gets under 1,000 mm of rain a year, while some highland areas get eight times that.

Papua New Guinea has roughly how many known spoken languages, more than any other country?

Around 840 living languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea, more than a tenth of the world's total, many of them by only a few hundred people.

Which English-based creole is the most widely used language in Papua New Guinea?

Tok Pisin takes its name from 'talk' and 'pidgin'; it is spoken by millions across the country and is now the first language of many children.

Which trade pidgin is one of Papua New Guinea's officially recognised national languages?

Hiri Motu, a simplified form of the Motu language once used on coastal trading voyages, spread through the southern Papua region under British and Australian rule.

Which Spanish navigator coined the name 'New Guinea' in 1545?

Yñigo Ortiz de Retez sailed along the north coast in 1545 and named the island Nueva Guinea because he thought its people resembled those of Africa's Guinea coast.

In 1884 eastern New Guinea was split between the British in the south and which power in the north?

Germany took the north-east as Kaiser-Wilhelmsland in 1884 while Britain claimed the south; Australia seized the German territory in 1914 and later ran it under a League of Nations mandate.

Papua New Guinea gained independence from Australia as a Commonwealth realm in which year?

Independence came on 16 September 1975, with Gough Whitlam's Australian government having driven the timetable and the kina introduced as a separate currency that April.

Who was Papua New Guinea's first prime minister, known as the 'father of the nation'?

Michael Somare, Chief Minister from 1972, led the country to independence and served about 17 years as prime minister over three separate stints.

Which mountain, at 4,509 metres, is the highest point in Papua New Guinea?

Mount Wilhelm was named in 1888 by the German journalist Hugo Zöller after a son of Chancellor Bismarck, and wreckage from a 1944 US aircraft crash lies on its slopes.

Which river, the longest on the island of New Guinea, winds without a delta into the Bismarck Sea?

The Sepik runs about 1,100 km from the central highlands to the Bismarck Sea, and its riverside villages are famed for carved haus tambaran spirit houses.

The shallow waterway separating Papua New Guinea from Australia's Cape York Peninsula is called what?

Torres Strait, about 150 km wide, was dry land until rising seas cut New Guinea off from Australia roughly 8,000 to 10,000 years ago; it is named for the navigator Luis Váez de Torres.

Which region of Papua New Guinea keeps its clocks one hour ahead of the rest of the country?

Bougainville adopted its own time zone, one hour ahead of the rest of the country, in December 2014; the autonomous region lies far to the east in the Solomon Islands chain.

What share of Bougainville voters backed independence from Papua New Guinea in the 2019 referendum?

Almost 98 percent chose independence over greater autonomy in the non-binding vote, promised under the 2001 peace agreement that ended a decade of civil war sparked by the Panguna copper mine.

What is the 1997 scandal over hiring mercenaries against island secessionists, which toppled the government, called?

The Sandline affair saw Julius Chan's government hire Sandline International to fight island secessionists; army commander Jerry Singirok refused to let the contractors deploy and Chan stepped aside.

Who became prime minister of Papua New Guinea in 2019 after Peter O'Neill resigned?

James Marape, a former finance minister who had quit O'Neill's cabinet weeks earlier, was elected prime minister by parliament in May 2019.

The Kokoda Track crosses which mountains on its way from the north coast towards the capital?

The Owen Stanley Range is the spine the 96 km track climbs; Papuan carriers who hauled supplies and wounded across it became known to Australians as the 'Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels'.

Roughly how many Japanese, Australian and US servicemen died in the New Guinea campaign?

Of the roughly 216,000 dead, the great majority were Japanese, many lost to disease and starvation rather than combat; fighting dragged on until the surrender in 1945.

Papua New Guinea's currency, the kina, takes its name from what?

A pearl shell used in trade gave the kina its name, a word from the Tolai people's Kuanua language; the currency is divided into 100 toea, also named after a traditional shell valuable.

Which creature is silhouetted in gold on Papua New Guinea's flag?

A Raggiana bird-of-paradise in gold soars on the red half of the flag, opposite the Southern Cross on black; the design was a 1971 competition entry by 15-year-old schoolgirl Susan Karike.

What is the nickname of Papua New Guinea's national rugby league team?

Kumuls is the name of the national rugby league side, representing the country's most popular sport; the rugby union team play as the Pukpuks and the cricketers as the Barramundis.

Papua New Guinea's first UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in 2008, preserves evidence of what?

Early independent agriculture is what Kuk Swamp documents: drainage ditches there go back some 9,000 years, and bananas were being cultivated 6,400 to 6,900 years ago.

The Kuk Swamp World Heritage site sits in the highlands near which provincial capital?

Mount Hagen lies about 12 km from the swamp, which sits in the upper Wahgi Valley at roughly 1,550 metres, near the upper limit for growing taro.

Which introduced crop replaced taro as the highland staple and let farming climb to 2,700 metres?

Sweet potato, known locally as kaukau, reached the highlands around 300 years ago and, thriving in poor soils and at altitude, triggered a population boom.

Roughly what share of Papua New Guinea's land is held as customary land by communities?

Around 97 percent of the land is customary land held by clans and communities, largely unregistered, with only about 3 percent alienated as state or freehold land.

Which Papua New Guinean township was destroyed in 1994 by ash from volcanoes erupting in its own harbour?

Rabaul was buried by ash from Tavurvur and Vulcan in September 1994; the town had been a colonial capital and a major Japanese wartime base, and the same two volcanoes had wrecked it in 1937.

Which river rises in the Star Mountains and reaches the Gulf of Papua through a delta?

The Fly rises in the Star Mountains near the western border and runs about 1,050 km to the Gulf of Papua; the Ok Tedi copper-gold mine sits on a headwater tributary.

Papua New Guinea's forests, the world's third-largest rainforest, hold roughly what share of all known species?

Roughly 5 percent of the world's known species live in Papua New Guinea, on under 1 percent of the planet's land, including more than 2,000 orchid species.

Bowerbirds, monotremes and birds of paradise live on Papua New Guinea's mainland but are absent from where?

The large northeastern islands of the Bismarck Archipelago were never joined to the mainland, so they lack those mainland groups and hold their own endemic bats and frogs instead.

Which is Papua New Guinea's largest island, home to a volcanic peninsula with famously fertile soil?

New Britain, the largest of the country's roughly 600 islands, owes the famously rich soil of its Gazelle Peninsula to the volcanoes that ring its north-eastern harbour.

What share of Papua New Guineans lived in urban areas in 2023, among the world's lowest?

Only about 14 percent of the population lived in towns and cities in 2023, among the lowest shares on earth, with most people in rural villages on customary land.

In March 2025 Papua New Guinea amended its constitution to adopt what as the official state religion?

Christianity became the declared state religion under the March 2025 amendment, passed after years of debate; the 2011 census had found 95.6 percent of citizens identifying as Christian.

What is Papua New Guinea's kinship-based network of mutual obligation called?

The wantok system binds people who share a language, wantok meaning 'one talk', into a web of mutual obligation that shapes politics and business alike.

Papua New Guinea's biggest gold mine, opened in 1997, sits on which island?

Lihir, in New Ireland Province, is the country's biggest gold producer, mined inside the caldera of an extinct volcano since 1997.

Which city, at the start of the Highlands Highway, is Papua New Guinea's busiest cargo port?

Lae, at the mouth of the Markham River in Morobe Province, is the country's main cargo port and the starting point of the Highlands Highway into the interior.

What was the 1860s trade shipping enslaved New Guineans to Queensland and Fiji known as?

Blackbirding recruited islanders by deception or force for Queensland and Fijian sugar plantations, and labourers who came home brought back the plantation pidgin that later grew into a national language.

Marist missionaries first brought their faith to New Guinea in 1847, landing on which island?

Woodlark Island, in the Solomon Sea off the eastern tip of the mainland, hosted the Marist mission from 1847, though it was abandoned within a decade; churches later became the main providers of schooling.

How many members were elected to Papua New Guinea's parliament at the 2022 election?

118 members were elected in 2022, 96 for open district seats and 22 for provincial seats, with the 22 provincial MPs doubling as governors.

In which year did Papua New Guinea first hold a general election under Limited Preferential Voting?

The 2007 general election was the first held nationwide under limited preferential voting, replacing the first-past-the-post system used at the chaotic 2002 poll.

The 1971 law that let accusations of sorcery serve as a defence for murder was repealed in which year?

The Sorcery Act was repealed in 2013 after a series of widely reported killings of accused witches, removing belief in sorcery as a defence to murder.

Which two new provinces did Papua New Guinea's parliament create in 2009?

Hela and Jiwaka were carved from Southern Highlands and Western Highlands respectively, voted through in 2009 and formally established in 2012, bringing the country's province-level divisions to 22.

Papua New Guinea co-founded which bloc in 1986 with the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu?

The Melanesian Spearhead Group was formed in 1986 to promote Melanesian solidarity and trade; New Caledonia's Kanak independence movement joined in 1989 and Fiji in 1996.

Papua New Guinea's largest lake, Lake Murray, covers roughly how much area?

Lake Murray, in Western Province, covers roughly 64,700 hectares at normal levels and expands greatly when wet-season floods spill across its surrounding plains.

Modern humans first reached New Guinea and Australia roughly how long ago?

The first arrivals came at least 42,000-45,000 years ago, crossing open water from Southeast Asia to the joined landmass of New Guinea and Australia known as Sahul.

In which year were the Australian-run territories of Papua and New Guinea united?

The Papua and New Guinea Act of 1949 merged the two under one Australian administration: the former mandated territory in the north and the old British colony in the south.

Which ceremonial exchange of shell necklaces and armbands did Malinowski document in the Trobriands?

The Kula ring, made famous by Bronisław Malinowski's 1922 study, passes red shell necklaces clockwise and white armbands anticlockwise between island partners, cementing ties rather than profit.

Which 1968 autobiography by Albert Maori Kiki was the first major work of PNG literature?

Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime recounts Albert Maori Kiki's journey from a Papuan village to national politics; he went on to serve as deputy prime minister at independence.

In which year did Papua New Guinea become an observer of ASEAN?

Observer status dates from 1976, making the country one of ASEAN's earliest outside partners, and was upgraded to special observer status in 1981.

Austronesian speakers of which culture reached the Bismarck Archipelago about 3,300 years ago?

Lapita people, known for their dentate-stamped pottery, appeared in the Bismarck Archipelago around 3,300 years ago and went on to settle Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.

Which province's capital, Goroka, hosts a famous September sing-sing show?

Eastern Highlands Province has Goroka as its capital; the Goroka Show, a sing-sing gathering of highland groups in feathers and paint, is held there every September.