On being Pulerau: entering the field

I arrived in the Lihir group of islands on 15 November 1997. As the plane circled over the four islands I noted that they looked quite green, despite the severe drought in Papua New Guinea of the previous few months, only recently broken. Lihir contrasted with the brown drabness of Port Moresby where I had spent the previous thirty hours, and I immediately decided that I was going to like this place. I stayed that night on the main island of the group, Niolam, in dormitories belonging to the gold mine, and ate at their ‘mess’. The food amazed me: a choice of meat or fish, lots of vegetables, a salad bar, cordial, and various types of dessert. Was this fieldwork in remote Papua New Guinea?

A few days later I climbed aboard a small ‘banana boat’. These craft, with an outboard motor and a plank in the bottom of the boat to sit on, are either 19 or 23 foot long and are the motor craft of choice for Lihirians. Luckily, at this point I did not realise that these boats generally have no safety equipment and occasionally have holes in the bottom of them. Nor had I yet heard the stories about their quite frequent disappearance.