Mine

May 19, 2021

“Tomorrow we’ll visit the mine. We’re going to go Panguna.” I feel a thrill of excitement at these words I had waited nine long months to hear. It is late afternoon after a long day of driving and I’m sitting with my wanwoks[1]. The thick grip of humidity surrounds us as I watch goosebumps of moisture cling to the beers we had cracked upon arrival. Distant thunder rumbles as mist slowly creeps in over the mountains that cradle the town of Arawa in a half moon. And nestled deep within those mountains is the Panguna copper mine. A place known to all Bougainvilleans. It had shaped the contours of Bougainville’s history.

The Autonomous Region of Bougainville sits at the tip of the Solomon Islands chain (though the arbitrary cartography of colonisation decided to join its fate with Papua New Guinea). Its shape reminds me of a Maori patu. The island is in fact two, separated near the top by the narrow but swiftly moving Buka passage. Here container ships depart for the Papua New Guinea mainland. For 50 cents colourful banana boats make a much shorter journey, ferrying passengers back and forth over the fast flowing water that divides the two isles. On one side is Buka, the political and economic centre of Bougainville. For close to a year this small town, on a little known island in the south Pacific, has been my home.

I work at the Directorate for Public Affairs, Media and Communication, with a team of locals who have welcomed me into their fold. Our job often involves travelling to remote communities, cut off from communication infrastructure, to deliver news and information from the government. On this particular trip we are on our way to Bana to cover a workshop for newly elected community government members. We break the first leg of our journey at Arawa, in central Bougainville. In its former life it was the heart of the region’s mining boom. Now only fragments of that time remain.

The trip down the island from Buka to Arawa is one I have taken many times. But this one is different. I will be leaving for New Zealand in just a few weeks. This marks the end of my time on the island.

I have grown fond of the unsealed, potholed road that jiggles and jostles you along through deep untamed bush, full of coconut trees, creeping vines and the radio static screech of the Kokoda bird. The river crossings can be hairy for multiple reasons. During the rainy season the waters swell and conceal upstream debris. Sometimes, a more man made hazard presents itself in the form of illegal tolls demanded by opportune raskols[2]. At times the road emerges next to rugged stretches of coastline or a runway that served troops during World War Two. Back inland it passes by former cacao plantations that seem to stretch endlessly. Once, the pods had been picked and processed on site, ready to be turned into chocolate and shipped around the world. Now these swathes of land lay overgrown and fallow. Somewhere beneath the thick jungle I imagine the machines still sit, shrouded in vegetation.

As we drive I am filled with a deep nostalgia. I stare manically out the window.

I want to remember it all.

Eventually the road becomes sealed again. Great carcasses of heavy machinery sit decomposing on the roadside. Naked power poles, wires conspicuously absent, start to spring up. Disconnected pillars that stretch into the distance. This is the highway that brings us to Arawa. And the where the first hints of an abandoned industry start to appear.

At one time moustachioed Aussie men in khaki shorts and knee high socks had filled Arawa’s streets. Their wives, with children in tow, had shopped in shiny supermarkets selling imported goods. They played squash in air conditioned courts, sunbathed on the beautiful white sand beaches, joined the boat club and watched movies in the cool interior of the cinema. They had flocked here in the seventies to work at the Panguna copper mine, developed by mining giant Rio Tinto. But all that was gone now.

The houses still remain. Wooden and louvered they perch upon stilts in the ordered symmetry of a manufactured town. Walking along the footpaths you can almost imagine you are in Northern Queensland. In the middle of town is the stark exterior of the ‘White House’. Once the former home of the Bougainville Provincial Government, it was now empty, save for a few opportune clothing stalls. An ice cream store has set up camp inside the old squash courts (far more practical in this heat). Shopping for snacks upon our arrival I happen upon a treasure unheard of in this part of the world. White wine. Perhaps another vestige of the town’s erstwhile existence. I willingly fork out NZ $40 for a sav that would be less than ten back home. It’s as though the island is gently reminding me of something I’m not ready to accept.

Soon you will leave this place.  

We wake early the next morning and begin to the slow climb, up a winding (and thankfully still sealed) mountain road. The sound of my colleagues speaking their tok ples[3] washes over me as I search out the ocean far below. It merges with the horizon and I don’t know where the two depart. As we criss cross our way up and up and up the land tumbles down, a beautiful mess of nature permitted to run free. Before we get to the mine we stop at Panguna village. This land, this place, it is not ours and we must get permission from the landowners. We park outside the ‘barracks’. These dormitories used to house bachelor miners, the more comfortable abodes in Arawa reserved for those with families. One half is gone, like a frame without a picture. But the rest remains, the rooms reclaimed by the original inhabitants of this land.

I have always been drawn to abandoned spaces. My camera has collected evidence of them over the years. I am fascinated by their frozen history and what, or who, came before. Their timeline seems only to stretch backwards, becoming frozen at a single point. But sitting here, as our passage to Panguna is negotiated, my excitement is sliding towards apprehension. What has drawn me to this place? But permission is granted and we drive on towards the pit.

Panguna mine sits vacant, a giant inverted scab upon the earth. Deep cuts along the slope form ridges, like an industrial rice paddy encircling a giant gaping hole. Far away at the bottom is a vibrant blue pool of water. An eerie, unnatural sound emanates from its core. It fills my ears with white noise. We have parked near the edge in an empty gravel lot. Lying watch are rusted remains of what look like control towers. I have no reference for these machines. A toppled bit of metal looks like a rocket ship. Here in the ground are what appear to me to be  jet engines blades. Massive sloping grates entangled in ferns cover the entrance to another world beneath. All these parts once held a purpose.

I think of the word mine. It implies ownership. Possession. A thing to be claimed. But too often the claiming is done by those with no connection to that which they wish to possess. Here in Bougainville land is akin to skin, an anatomical structure to be passed along, from mother to daughter, for generations. The land is a part of them. But then a rich seam of copper had been discovered and a foreign corporation had determined “This land should be mine.”

The decision was devastating.

Bougainville is still emerging from the decade long conflict with Papua New Guinea that ended in 1998. When ‘the crisis’ first erupted the government in Port Moresby abandoned the island, leaving no hospitals or schools, only soldiers. It was a time when women had to give birth in the jungle or on cold concrete floors, where the majority of casualties came not from enemy fire but from a lack of access to basic health care, when Bougainvillean boys full of bravado fought each other. The causes for the conflict are too complex to detail here but the Panguna mine lies at the heart of things. Anger at environmental degradation and the flow of profits away from local hands became the catalyst for the war.

Bougainville still holds the imprint of the conflict. Its embedded deep within the collective consciousness. The people, the landscape, the structures. All hold traces of that time. And Bougainville had made its impressionupon me. In Tok Pisin, the word is hanmark, implying an imprint made by a hand, but a gentle one.

We eventually return to our squat tin and timber office in Buka, that sits behind the airport runway. As I finish up my last remaining days the sounds of planes taking off and landing are no longer background noise. I know that soon, I will be leaving. I sit with my wanwoks on my last day of work, sharing one last beer.

“Kayt yu no lustingting yumi. Yu meri bilong Bougenvil nau. Sapos Niu Zeeland em bagarap? Yu kam bek long hia olgeta taim[4]”

We laugh together and I know I won’t forget this moment. This place. I watch the condensation form along the smooth exterior of the bottles. Each drop like a memory of my time here, sliding away from me, as much as I wish to hold onto them. They may be fleeting but I carry their hanmark with me still.

[1] Workmates

[2] Rascals/‘Bad guys’

[3] Local language

[4] Don’t forget us Kayt. You’re a woman of Bougaiville now. Say things turn to shit in New Zealand? You can come back here anytime.