New Guinea

What do you when your world is turned upside down? If you're five young rats with music in your soul and dancing in your blood, you head for the Hollow, and the chance to dance at the Boom Boom Room.

In 1979, the idea of an oral history based project on the administration of Papua New Guinea germinated at the ABC, driven by Tim Bowden and Daniel Connell. This massive undertaking involved the recording of 350 hours of tape recorded interviews with Australians and Papua New Guineans who had been involved with Australia's colonial administration which ended with self government and independence in 1975.

Use your mind's natural rhythm to learn a language with Rhythms Easy Pidgin (Papua New Guinea) from EuroTalk. It's naturally easier to learn something when it's set to rhythmic music, so that is exactly what we've done. Rhythms puts your mind painlessly to work: you don't even need to focus! Simple words and phrases are set to a varied pattern of rhythms and music designed to help you learn and to keep you engaged so that you won't just switch off after five minutes.

Established after World War I by the Royal Australian Navy, the Coast Watchers were a loose organisation of several hundred European settlers, missionaries, patrol officers and planters living in British and Australian Pacific Island territories whose job it was to observe and report on the...

Within 24 hours of the Japanese invasion of Northern New Guinea at Gona in July 1942, the Australian militiamen of ‘B’ Company, 39th Battalion, spent four weeks fighting a delaying action against a crack Japanese force outnumbered by three to one. By mid-August, the rest of the battalion had arrived, and these men took up a position at Isurava, in the heart of the cloud-covered mountains and jungles of the Owen Stanley Range. The battle for Isurava would be the defining battle of the Kokoda Campaign and has rightfully been described as Australia’s Thermopylae.

Chrysanthemum is a funny and honest school story about teasing, self-esteem, and acceptance to share all year round. Performed by Academy-Award Winner Meryl Streep. Chrysanthemum thinks her name is absolutely perfect—until her first day of school. "You're named after a flower!" teases Victoria. "Let's smell her," says Jo. Chrysanthemum wilts. What will it take to make her blossom again?