Papua New Guinea’s crescent isle hides national volcano records
New Britain is the Bismarck Archipelago’s largest island, a volcanic crescent in Papua New Guinea separated from New Guinea by the Solomon Sea’s Dampier and Vitiaz Straits. Germans once called it Neupommern—“New Pomerania”—before the name shifted with colonial rule.
Roughly the size of Taiwan, the island covers about 35,140 square kilometres, 38th largest on Earth. It curves about 520 kilometres along its southeastern shore and is 29 to 146 kilometres wide. Mount Ulawun, a 2,334-metre stratovolcano in the east, is the highest volcano in the country, and other active vents include Langila, the Garbuna Group and the twin cones of the Rabaul caldera. In 1994 Tavurvur erupted and buried the provincial capital, Rabaul, under metres of ash, so the capital moved to Kokopo. In the east, the limestone Nakanai Range is honeycombed with sinkholes and river caves nominated for World Heritage in 2007.
Papuan peoples have lived here since at least 21,000 BC, and Austronesian speakers arrived about 3,000 years ago; today some ten Papuan and forty Austronesian languages are spoken. The Tolai around Rabaul are matrilineal and keep the dukduk secret society alive. William Dampier arrived on 27 February 1700 and called the island Nova Britannia. Germany proclaimed a protectorate in November 1884, renaming it Neupommern, and by 1909 about 190,000 indigenous people shared it with 773 foreigners and plantations of copra, cotton, coffee and rubber.
Australian troops landed on 11 September 1914 in one of the First World War's earliest battles, and the island passed to Australian mandate in 1920. Japanese marines stormed Rabaul on 23 January 1942 and turned it into a key base until 1944; US Marines who landed at Cape Gloucester called its swamps worse than Guadalcanal, and the Allies ultimately encircled Rabaul rather than assault it.
The population reached 493,585 in 2010. Oil palm plantations are rapidly consuming the forests: nearly a quarter of lowland forest below 100 metres disappeared between 1989 and 2000, and if that pace holds all forest below 200 metres will be gone by 2060, putting species such as the New Britain kingfisher at risk.
Source: New Britain
