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[The People] [The Province - physical features] [Business & Investment]
The People
Archaeologists claim that the first inhabitants of the Eastern
Highlands Province may have arrived about 18,000 years ago. They were
hunters and gatherers and lived in caves and other rock shelters.
This has been confirmed by mineralized charcoal remains of posts dug
out from several cave and rock shelter sites in the highlands. This
would make the Eastern Highlands one of the first inhabited regions
of the Island of New Guinea.
The first inhabitants made full use of the natural environment. They hunted animals for food and used plants for food and shelter. Because of the rich and varied environment, the people were not inclined to garden or domesticate animals.
Later, the people started to build houses and developed villages and hamlets. The houses were circular, made of poles, thatched with kunai grass and had woven pitpit walls with earthen floors. When they started making gardens, they made them close to their dwellings.
These early inhabitants practiced a form of fallow agriculture. They cultivated an area and after several crops left the land for a number of years to return at a later date. The main staple food cultivated was sweet potato (kaukau). The gardens were fenced with sticks, tree branches and split wood and they were drained with a rectangular lattice of ditches.
The main subsistence implements used were stone axes, digging sticks, and bamboo splits used as knives and bows and arrows. These implements were used for gardening, hunting, building and self defense. Most of the people of the Eastern Highlands today are still subsistence farmers and some still use bows and arrows and digging sticks.
Most people still live in villages in the rural areas. They continue to make gardens and grow sweet potato as their staple food, with some variety added to the crops grown. The gardens are now being fenced with permanent materials, such as pig wire, pickets and barbed wire. The implements have changed from digging sticks, bamboo splits and stone axes to spades, knives and steel axes. Some people even own guns for hunting purposes.
The style of houses have also changed in some places both in form, and in the materials used. Rather than the traditional circular huts, some people, now build rectangular houses with iron roofing, instead of thatch. These type of houses, in most instances, are built by people in the community who have an income, either from cash crops such as coffee or from their employment in the towns.
Although the style of housing has changed in some areas, the methods of gardening have not changed much at all. People continue to drain their gardens as their ancestors did. The cultivators continue to be the women and men tend to do the fencing and in some cases the drainage work. But it is the women who clear the land, dig it, plant and harvest the food.
However, what has changed is that the fallow method of agriculture has become increasingly impractical due to land shortage. People are going back to the same plot of land sooner than has been the practice in the past.
About 385,000 people live in Eastern Highlands Province, (nearly ten per cent of the country's total population). There are more than 20 separate language groups, not counting numerous dialects. In the Goroka Valley the largest language groups are the Gahuku (80,000) and BenaBena (60,000). On the eastern side, the largest groups are the Kamano/Kafe speaking people (80,000) living between Kainantu and Henganofi districts.
To the south of the Province, there are the Fore speaking people (60,000) who live near the Okapa District and further south to the border of Gulf Province. The other major language groups are the Frigano in the Lufa District, Lunumbe near the head waters of the Asaro River and the Agarabi on the northeastern side of Kainantu.
Language divisions, and geographical terrains separating language groups seem to determine cultural behavior. Although cultural practices seem to resemble one another depending on language and geographical factors, in many areas cultural practices differ widely. There are great differences between the ceremonies conducted for burials, bride prices, courtships and dancing styles. However, in some area of cultural behavior, similarities are evident between people of different language groups. The people from the Fore and the Kamano language groups, for example, are very similar in their art and decorations, dancing and singsings and in the costumes they wear for special occasions.
The Province is well bounded by natural features. The Bismarck Range with its highest peak at Mt. Otto (3,350 meters) to the north, separates the Eastern Highlands from Madang and Morobe Provinces, with Markham and Ramu Valleys on the other side. To the east, the Kratke Range runs through the centre of the Province, and to the south the Purari and Lamari Rivers form the borders separating the Morobe and the Gulf Provinces.
To the West, the boundary runs along the lower Wahgi and Upper Tua Rivers behind Mt. Michael (3,600 meters), then follows a north-south line to separate the Chimbu Province. The Eastern Highlands Province became economically developed before the other Highland Provinces. This was due to its central location in close proximity to the main ports of Lae and Madang, as well as its early contact with Europeans.
The Province consists of three different soil types. Humid brown ash soils occur in many parts of the flat areas such as the Asaro and Upper Ramu valleys where coffee is grown, while brown soils occur on hilly or mountain areas at altitudes up to 2500 meters. These areas support shifting cultivation and a small population. Poorer soils, known as rankers or regosols occur on rugged mountain areas, and steep areas of up to 3,000 meters altitude.
These soils are generally shallow and prone to landslide, and cultivation is limited, supporting only a handful of people, such as those living on the Daulo Pass, and parts of Unggai and Watabung. The grasslands occur on the valley floor, the hills and even on ranges.
The Province has sweeping valleys with good soils, dotted with stretches of land not suitable for cultivation. The valley floors are generally covered with grass, foothills with light scrub and grass and the mountains with dense forest graduating to sub-alpine grasses on the highest peaks.
The eroded materials were carried away and deposited in the valleys. In some areas, such as seen on the road towards Okapa, the formation of hills and mountains are less rugged and not as sharp as those surrounding Goroka. This is because these hills and mountains consisted of softer material like siltstone. When erosion acted on these materials, the movement of the material and the stream energy was slow, resulting in the creation of vast areas of hilly uplands and valley systems.
Unlike anywhere else in Papua New Guinea, the original vegetation has been modified many times over in the highlands. This is more marked in the Eastern Highlands where both the impact of man and dryer weather combined to eliminate much of the original vegetation.
All the areas below 2,500 meters were traditionally used for subsistence agriculture and hunting and today they are used for much the same purpose. The result is the growth of tall grassland and low regrowth of shrubs.
The gardening areas are mainly dominated by kunai grass, but elsewhere vast areas of land are covered under short grassland. This is believed to have been caused by human interference, soil and climatic change, and these areas are mostly used for hunting purposes.
In the past people used to plan casuarina trees in and around their garden land as a mark of ownership, and for firewood. This activity has intensified and now many grassland areas have a wooded appearance.
There are still patches of forests below 2,750 meters. The species of trees are mixed but not as diverse as those in the lowland forests.
The other major type of vegetation is pitpit, found in swampy areas and lakes and at all altitudes. The climate in the Eastern Highlands is generally uniform throughout the year with cool nights and warm days. The temperatures follow an equable ranging between 14C and 30C. In the capital, Goroka, mean humidity varies from 87 per cent at 9.00 a.m. to 57 per cent at about 3.00 p.m. The movement of clouds, typical of most highlands areas, has a large effect on the humidity.
In the early morning, valley slopes and valley flats are usually submerged in the fog with only the higher hills and mountain ranges standing out in the sunlight. As the day progresses, the mist lifts towards the ranges and normally form heavy rain clouds resulting in afternoon rain.
Towards the evening the clouds move from the ranges to the valleys and with evening cooling they sink to the valley bottom. The Eastern Highlands has two seasons, the wet and the dry. The dry season usually goes from about June to October and the wet season usually runs between December and early April. In the wet season the mean monthly fall is between 200 and 300 millimeters.
The pig has always been a sign of wealth to the Eastern Highlander and pigs were exchanged during such events as marriage ceremonies. This represented one of the first active signs of business principles. One pig could be loaned out to relatives to help them start a herd with subsequent return of perhaps two piglets from a new litter, and so interest was being paid.
It was however an external influence which proved to be the stimulus required to instigate business within the Eastern Highlands. Following on from the discovery of alluvial gold in the Bulolo area of Morobe during the 1920's several prospectors tried their luck in the highland regions. Little gold was found but those first explorers seeing the large population and fertile land realized that the Highlands had much potential.
Kainantu was the main administrative station in the Highlands during the 1930's and from there patrols set out to establish control of the virtually unknown land and population. This was no easy task and it was initially very dangerous, so much so that in the late 1930's the Highlands was closed to all but official representatives of the Australian Government. This closure and the disruption caused by the Second World War meant that little of the business potential was to be realized until the later part of the 1940's.
Those early patrols used the highly prized kina shells, salt and steel tools in exchange for labor and food provided by the Highlanders. This was the method of payment up until 1947 when money was introduced. It was shortly after this that the first trade stores began to appear and more significantly the time at which coffee was first planted commercially.
It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of the coffee crop to the people of the Eastern Highlands with respect to the establishment of commerce. After the early settlers proved coffee to be a viable and profitable crop, the early 1950's saw many expatriates rushing to the Highlands to start plantations. This unacceptable ''land rush'' was stopped in 1954 with the announcement of a new land alienation policy. This effectively meant that no land could be utilized without the prior approval of both traditional landowners and the Administration.
Although initially total control of the coffee crop was with foreign settlers, by the early 1960's several Highlanders were establishing their own plantations. This was the starting point for a new generation of indigenous businessmen. Many now famous Eastern Highland entrepreneurs owe their wealth and prestige to this period of coffee development. The growth in the coffee industry was dramatic and by the late 1960's Eastern Highlanders were producing more coffee than their expatriate counterparts.
Whilst many growers looked upon coffee as an easy source of cash to satisfy their day to day requirements, a few saw the opportunities that were opening up within a rapidly expanding economy. With the relatively high financial returns available from coffee many businessmen were now looking beyond the garden for new business ventures.
Small rural trade stores began to appear, selling tinned fish and meat, rice, cooking utensils and gardening tools. These stores needed a reliable and inexpensive mode of transport to bring cargo from the coastal ports. Light trucks were purchased and thus another form of business was created with the establishment of the Highlands's transport industry.
With very little venture finance available to Highlanders from the commercial banks at this stage, a substantial amount of the Province's coffee revenue was being redirected into these new forms of business and investment. The individual coffee grower was not always able to purchase a vehicle or start a trade store on his own so this was often undertaken on a communal basis.
With Independence now becoming a reality in the minds of many Papua New Guineans the early 1970's saw an acceleration of the purchase of assets from expatriates in the Eastern Highlands. It was also realized at this time that even with a Business Group several of the larger foreign owned plantations would be out of financial reach. Several well established business leaders saw the only solution to this problem was to organize larger groups to purchase these plantations.
Kainantu and Goroka, as the original centres of administration inevitably became the two main areas of commercial development. The diversity of new business within the Eastern Highlands during the late 1960's and 1970's was the rapid establishment of wholesalers, retailers, sawmills, builders, hotels and all the other service businesses necessary for a successful commercial infrastructure. Coupled with the expansion of the Public Service and, after Independence, the creation of the Provincial Government system a whole new generation of wage earners became consumers.
Whilst both Kainantu and Goroka still had an almost total reliance on the coffee crop, efforts were made during the 1970's to further other avenues of primary production. Livestock has always been a popular form of investment in the Eastern Highlands, many projects, both privately and Government owned, have tried and generally failed to succeed commercially. During times of low coffee prices the hue and cry was heard regarding finding alternate cash crops, lip-service was generally paid to new ideas but normally little in the way of financial assistance was forthcoming from the major producers or Government agencies.
Goroka became somewhat of a centre for the Highland's coffee industry with the setting-up of the Coffee Industry Board and several of the larger coffee exporters and processors within the town. The prosperity of many a booming business venture could obviously be directly related to the coffee industry.
As the 'gateway to the Highlands' the Eastern Highlands also became an important centre of communications via the aviation industry with Pacific Helicopters selecting Goroka for its headquarters. Anyone traveling by road to the other Highland Provinces had to pass through Kainantu and Goroka. Given the condition of the Highlands Highway prior to 1980 this sometimes became a two day journey, so many hotels flourished. The opening-up of a new country also saw the emergence of a tourist industry, which to this day has yet to realize it's full potential.
During the 1980's business within the Eastern Highlands generally continued to expand, and ironically alluvial gold mining saw a resurgence with the Mount Victor Project. Large companies, such as Collins & Leahy, played a vital role in the development of the area with the establishment of an enterprising array of diversified investment projects which invariable created employment and proved profitable.
The last two years of the 1980's once again saw a massive drop in the price of coffee resulting in a general slump in business. Few companies were immune to the effects of this widespread reduction of revenue within the Eastern Highlands and many once again realized the problems of almost total dependence on coffee. The frailty of this coffee based economy has caused the downfall of several affiliated businesses and has also caused the closure of a commercial bank in Goroka.
Even now, with the expectations of doom and gloom within the coffee industry, growers are still planting new areas. Researchers continue to try and discover a viable cash crop as an alternate or supplement to coffee. Citrus fruits, root vegetables, passion fruit and all manner of other agricultural crops continue to be hailed as the answer, but none has the lure or attraction of coffee and none other can boast that it was responsible for the creation and resultant success of the Highland's economy.