New Gold Dreams

After centuries of conflict and exploitation, today the farthest-flung outpost of Papua New Guinea is on the cusp of change. Discover the turbulent history, tropical beauty and proud culture of Bougainville

-  Mark Stratton

The world’s-newest country-in-waiting possesses the raw ingredients of paradise. French Admiral Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, who named its main island after himself while collecting territories off eastern New Guinea in 1768, would surely have appreciated this astonishing natural beauty – if he’d bothered to set foot ashore. As I stood on the coast, I imagined his skin prickling with sweat rising from the florets of dark volcanic hills that punctuate the rainforest. And I pictured his eyes squinting at luminous turquoise-blue lagoons, beyond which coral reefs thwart the surging Solomon Sea.

If he were alive today, too, the admiral would likely have pooh-poohed any notion that one day Bougainville might be independent. He would probably have pointed to the unrest and other challenges that plagued South Sudan and Timor-Leste, the most recent recipients of statehood, and scoffed.

Now, however, it’s Bougainville’s turn. I visited not long after December 2019’s referendum, in which 97.7% of Bougainvilleans voted for independence from Papua New Guinea. And I arrived not aboard a wooden galleon but by a two-hour flight from Port Moresby, across teal-blue ocean in which coral atolls are scattered like bleached-white lifebuoys.

The referendum was a proviso of a 2001 peace accord granting Bougainville greater autonomy, although the result is non-binding so independence will come only after approval by the national parliament. The peace accord had ended a long civil war that began in 1989 and escalated into the deadliest conflict seen in Oceania since Japan’s Second World War invasions, costing an estimated 20,000 lives.