DISCOVERY: Part 3 - The Trip (Goroka Bus Stop, E.H.P.)

You know. When one thinks of going on a two day hike up a mountain- you train for it. Seems like a really sensible thing to do. Wise even. But nah not us bro. Neither one of us on the team (except my sister Ruth I think) had any kind of regular fitness regime going on in our lives at the time. Except maybe the walks one would take to a cafe or bar for some social rendezvous or pointless business meeting. And I guess I did some bullshit bush walks sporadically on the weekends but none of these came with an immediate 70 degree incline. Nah this was a first aid kit, navigation skills, experience needed kind of grade 5 walk.

I laugh about it now but it really was the type of thing you do to really test relationships with people and we had no idea what we’d all agreed to do - myself and my sister included. Truth be told, we’d gone up once when we were kids with my Dedi Si as a request from my mother who’d realised that after her separation from my biological dad, we needed to get to know where our ancestors came from on her side. I remember that trip blowing my little 10 year old ‘Roald Dahl’ loving mind as we’d spent most of our time in PNG in my father’s hometown of Rabaul. Though still beautiful, Rabaul was a fairly urbanised coastal port town and unlike the mysteriousness of this mountain Narnia we were being ushered through by my uncle.

That being said, I swear my Dedi Si must have taken us the ‘EASY’ way up or I must have hit my head after that as my muscles had absolutely no recollection of how labour intensive this climb was gonna be. Needless to say, the challenge was risen to by the whole collective and what we found to be true is that sometimes when you don’t know what to expect, it’s easier to propel yourself forward as the hope in you only stretches and you’re able to believe that the pain in your, thighs, back and butt will at some point dissipate.

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One of the first things you’ll hear before getting out of bed in my Aine’s village is a rooster crowing and the crunch of an axe splitting firewood to get breakfast happening. You’ll then hear the low muffled voices of family members already chatting about the day or telling one of the kids to go fetch water from a nearby spring to make tea for the ‘visitors’. Occasionally someone will be too far away to warrant a whisper and you'll hear a yodel worthy cry across the valley to tell the that person to buy some tea bags. And then it’s back to low mumbles again as if they hadn't just ripped you out of your sleep.

Unfortunately what I didn’t hear on the morning of the day we left for our hike was my dear Aine Kiagi. And you ALWAYS heard her first. She mostly had something to complain about according to my mother and she did it with the huskiness of a well seasoned smoker occasionally coughing through her emphysema. This time she wasn’t going to be making me kau kau (sweet potato) on the fire like she always did. She wouldn’t be burying the freshly dug out kau kaus under the fire’s hot coals until they charcoaled on the outside then scraping the black off with a knife or something sharp like a piece of broken bottle then handing it to me in the loving way only grandmother’s can. I’d think it was the most special kau kau I could ever have and proceed to ingest it with the pride of someone who’d just been moved to business class and served champagne and caviar whilst your siblings watch from economy. Down it would go with sweet tea or some wild avocado. A simple offering yes but you’ve never had a sweet potato until you’ve had a Highlander sweet potato. Better still, you’ve never had sweet potato until you’ve had my Aine’s kau kau.

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It was a pretty foggy morning mixed with wood-fire smoke when we emerged from the hut that once belonged to my Aine. Felt strange to be sleeping in her house without her in it and I admit I tried my darnedest to keep one eye open all night in case she tried to spirit ‘hey’ me and scare me to shit the bed. Happy to say she didn’t.

Bags packed, we start the walk down the valley from Aine’s and gradually ascend to the other side past my Dedi Mike’s house and onwards to the 6 Mile bus stop. Here we caught a bus into the main township of Goroka where we needed to board another.

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Catching a bus in the Highlands, specifically at the Goroka Market bus stop, is like trying to wrangle cattle in the Wild West. There are no timetables. There are no traffic controllers and certainly no road rules. You find out where buses are going by having good ears so you can just about make out the destinations each bus driver’s crew man (or boss kuru) is incesantly yelling over each other. Imagine trying to catch a bus to Canberra and you walk into the bus station where 50 people are yelling Adelaide Adelaide Adelaide! Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne! Brisbane Brisbane Brisbane! All at the same. damn time. Over and over. And over again. But not only do you need your ears open, you gotta keep your whits about you too. God forbid you get run over by an overzealous driver who’s keen to complete his route yesterday lest a fumbling foreigner get in the way. I used to catch buses like this to school and back again thought this trip taught me that the longer I spend out of PNG the harder it is to regain that confidence to move in those streets like I used to.

Thankfully for us we had a convoy of uncles and cousins who doubled as henchmen throughout the journey successfully ‘lassoing’ a bus for us whilst we waited. Soon we were headed up the Highlands Highway, packed in like canned meat and eager to meet our awaiting mountain.