50 Fun Facts About Papua New Guinea

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

The western half is Indonesian; 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?

Most are spoken by fewer than a thousand people; only Vanuatu packs its languages more densely.

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

Its name comes from 'talk' and 'pidgin'; five to six million people use it, and many children now grow up with it as a first language.

Which trade pidgin is a national language of Papua New Guinea alongside English and Tok Pisin?

It took hold in the British- and Australian-run south; sign language was added as a fourth recognised language in 2015.

'New Guinea' was coined in 1545 by a Spaniard who thought the people resembled those of where?

Ynigo Ortiz de Retez made the comparison; 'Papua' had been applied by the Portuguese two decades earlier.

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

Australia seized the German half in 1914 and later ran it as a League of Nations mandate; the two territories were merged in 1949.

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

Gough Whitlam's government drove the timetable; the kina had been introduced as a separate currency that April.

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

He was Chief Minister from 1972, served 17 years as PM over three stints and liked to appear in a lap-lap rather than trousers.

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

A German journalist named it in 1888 after Chancellor Bismarck's son; a US bomber crashed into it in 1944.

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

It is navigable for most of its 1,100 km, and its villages are famed for carved spirit houses.

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

It is only about 152 km wide; rising seas cut New Guinea off from Australia around 10,000 years ago.

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

The autonomous region lies far to the east, closer culturally and geographically to the Solomon Islands.

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

The vote was promised in 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?

Army chief Jerry Singirok refused to let the contractors deploy and the prime minister was forced out.

The 1942 Kokoda Track campaign saw Australian and Papuan troops halt a Japanese advance towards which city?

The Japanese got within sight of the city before withdrawing in September; the track runs 96 km over the mountains.

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

Papuan carriers who hauled supplies and wounded along it became known to Australians as the 'Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels'.

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

Milne Bay, alongside Kokoda and Guadalcanal, marked the turning point of the Pacific War; fighting continued until 1944.

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

The word is from the Tolai people's Kuanua language; it replaced the Australian dollar at par in 1975 and is divided into 100 toea.

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

The design, with the Southern Cross on black below, was chosen in 1971 from a competition entry by schoolgirl Susan Karike.

Papua New Guinea's rugby league team, the Kumuls, takes its nickname from the local word for what?

Rugby league is the national sport, brought by Australian soldiers in the 1940s; fans have died in clashes over results.

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

Drainage ditches at Kuk Swamp go back some 9,000 years, and banana and sugar cane were being cultivated there 6,400 to 6,900 years ago.

The Kuk Early Agricultural Site sits in the highlands near which provincial capital?

The swamp lies in the Wahgi Valley at about 1,550 metres, on the edge of where taro could be grown.

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

It came via Portuguese traders and the Moluccas in the 17th or 18th century and helped the population boom and the 'big man' system spread.

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

Most titles are unregistered; the country's constitution explicitly protects traditional communities.

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

It had been the capital of German New Guinea and a major Japanese base; the 1937 eruption had already wrecked it once.

How many active volcanoes does Papua New Guinea have?

There are 22 dormant ones too; the country straddles the meeting point of the Indo-Australian and Pacific plates on the Ring of Fire.

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

Perhaps a third of those species live nowhere else; there are over 2,000 orchid species alone.

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

The big islands to the northeast were never joined to the mainland, so they evolved their own fruit bats and frogs instead.

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

Along with more than 600 smaller ones; the volcanic Gazelle Peninsula around Rabaul gives New Britain its fertile soil.

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

Most people live in customary communities of under 300; the Highlands region alone holds 43 percent of the population.

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

The 2011 census found 95.6 percent of citizens identified as Christian, with Catholics the largest denomination at 26 percent.

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

Wantok means 'one talk', people who share a language; the Kula ring is the Trobriand exchange of shell valuables.

Papua New Guinea's largest mine is a private gold mine on which island?

Ok Tedi and Porgera follow; extractive resources make up 86 percent of exports and LNG shipments began in 2014.

Which port handles about half of Papua New Guinea's international cargo?

With only two highways reaching the interior, air travel is the most reliable transport and there are over 500 airstrips.

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

It was stopped in 1884; returnees brought back the Melanesian pidgin that grew into today's national creole.

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

Missions became the main channel for Western culture, and churches still provide much of the country's schooling.

Papua New Guinea's national parliament has how many seats?

Ninety-six represent districts and 22 represent provinces, and those 22 MPs double as provincial governors.

Under Papua New Guinea's Limited Preferential Vote system, voters must rank at least how many candidates?

It replaced first-past-the-post after the 1997 election, when 87 percent of winners had less than 30 percent of the vote.

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

An estimated 50 to 150 alleged witches are still killed each year in the country.

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

Hela was cut from Southern Highlands and Jiwaka from Western Highlands, bringing the total to 20 provinces plus Bougainville and the capital district.

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

It has been an ASEAN observer since 1976 and has applied for full membership.

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

The country has more than 5,000 lakes but only 22 bigger than 1,000 hectares.

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

They were among the earliest migrants out of Africa; New Guineans and Aboriginal Australians diverged about 37,000 years ago.

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

Australia had held German New Guinea as a League of Nations mandate after World War I; independence followed in 1975.

Which Melanesian exchange system trades items to maintain relationships rather than for profit?

Relationships, including ties to the land, sit at the centre of traditional Melanesian culture.

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

The government began actively supporting literature in 1970, and much of the early output was nationalistic and anti-colonial.

Since which year has Papua New Guinea been an observer state of ASEAN?

It gained special observer status in 1981 and has applied for full membership.

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

Banana and sugarcane probably spread from New Guinea to the wider world through these trading networks.

Roughly what share of all jobs in Papua New Guinea are in agriculture?

The country grows about 1.6% of the world's palm oil and 1% of its coffee.