OPERATION PLES DRAI PAPUA NEW GUINEA DROUGHT

THE PNG AND AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE FORCES WORKING TOGETHER FOR THE PEOPLE OF PNG DURING THE 1997 – 1998 DROUGHT

LAND OF THE UNEXPECTED

The Drought in Papua New Guinea has brought with it many problems but with the problems also come solutions.

From the public servants and military members from PNG and Australia, to village elders and local individuals the drought, like other historical tragedies, has brought out the best in people.

PNG Defence Force Troops and their Australian Counterparts are working together in joint and combined air operations to assist the PNG Government combat the effects of the drought across the country.

Ten aircraft which include: three Army Black Hawks, two Army Chinooks, three RAAF Caribou and two RAAF C-130 form the backbone of the ADF contingent in PNG assisting in the drought relief operations. At the guidance of the PNG government drought relief coordinating agency, the ADF aircraft are taking food to remote communities in the worst hit areas.

The air operations will deliver supplies at a rate in excess of 600 tonnes per month to the most severely affected areas only accessible by air.

At the Mission Station of Kosipe, which is 110km north of Port Moresby and more than 7,000 feet above sea level, temperatures at night have recently been below freezing.

The Station was all but destroyed by a fire which was carelessly started in July of this year and only a few buildings, sited near a shallow creek, remain.

The dry conditions in the region have kept the fire, which destroyed the settlement, alive and it can still be seen smoking away in the surrounding hills.

Only the elderly, sick and weak remain at Kosipe. Most people have moved to nearby stations to live with family and friends and to be closer to the primary distribution flights.

Until the relief mission started people depended on relatives to carry 25kg bags of rice to them from Woitape which is a six-hour walk away and accessible only by air.

After hearing of the desperate situation many people were in, Medics from the PNGDF Health Centre, based at Taurama Barracks in Port Moresby, were dispatched to Kosipe, in Australian Army Black Hawk helicopters, to conduct routine inspections on children and adults.

The medics found some people to be in rather poor health due to a lack of nutrition and sanitation. One man was treated for a severe tropical ulcer on his foot which could not be treated before as the closest health centre was also located at Woitape Station.

Among the people examined was Joe One (pronounced Owe Ney) a man who doesn't know his birthday but can remember watching aeriel dog fights over his village, as a boy, during World War Two.

He also remembers the day a Catholic Missionary came to his village in 1958 and how he helped build a church, airfield and eventually a boarding school at the Mission. And when his name was changed from Avu to Joseph.

Kosipe became a thriving community and although Joe went on many journeys to, as he says, "every corner of PNG" he always returned to his beloved homeland.

PNG is locally referred to as the "Land of the Unexpected" and Kosipe and Joe too had a surprise for the visiting soldiers.

Among the charred landscape, where the burnt grass crunches under your feet as you walk from place to place there is a small garden which produces the only green, edible, vegetation for miles.

Joe has carefully nurtured a small garden where he grows cabbages and spring onions which he gleefully adds to his meals of relief rice.

His is the only garden which has yielded any produce since fire and frost decimated the rest. The reason for this is a small plastic water pump which he proudly straps to his back to demonstrate his gardening proficiency to the soldiers.

Although a creek continues to flow through Kosipe the chilling temperatures and frost have made it very difficult for villagers to keep up their gardens.

Joe is able to nurse his plants only by getting up with the sun and braving the cold mornings, wearing no more than a tattered UB40 jacket, Chicago Bulls ballcap, trousers and bare feet.

He then straps on his trusty pump and sprays water on the plants to melt away the frost.

Kosipe is the site of archaeological findings of human activity dating back to about 26,000 years. Joe is sure that one day the rain will return and as he stands among the charred remains of Kosipe his garden of green cabbages shines as a monument of hope to his neighbours and his country.

By: Captain Chip Henriss-Anderssen - November 12 ,1997

Land of the Unexpected Picture Gallery.