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Birth of a Town
In the past couple of months Arawa has become something more than
a collection of houses masquerading as a "town". Two schools are
now ready, the country's best equipped hospital is nearing completion,
bitumen is already appearing on the roads and in September the
Administration allocated Arawa's first blocks of commercial land to
individual businessmen.
In short, Arawa is looking more like a town every day.
In 10 years time residents will look back to 1971 as a pioneering
year when they were witnesses to the birth of a whole new town,
carved out of a 50-year-old plantation.
They will probably take pride in the monuments left to Arawa's
plantation past; Kip McKillop's old homestead, turned into public
gardens; the waterfall at the back of the town where German public
servants drove their horse-and-buggies in the early 1900s; the tall
ficus elastica trees at the front of the town, spared from
the bulldozer because they were planted by the Germans over 50 years ago.
Arawa first entered the European map in the very early 1900s when
the Germans administered New Guinea. By 1910 there were probably
a German plantation at Arawa and certainly by 1918 there was a
plantation for Expropriation Board of Australia to confiscate from
the Germans and run with a series of Expropriation managers.
In the early 1930s the plantation was sold to an Englishman,
Jack Ellis, a former policeman in Kokopo. He operated it continuously -
bar the war years - until 1952 when he sold it to the partnership of Kip
McKillop and Fred Salisbury.
The plantation was known as one of the best and most attractive
in the territory and under Kip it also harboured one of the best
orchid collections in the world (the orchids now grow in Lae and
Rabaul botanical gardens).
It was natural, however, that when the Bougainville Copper project
became a reality, this flat land, ideally situated between Kieta
and Panguna, would be eyed by the Administration as good site for
a future town to house mine personnel, public servants and private
business.
And in 1969 the Administration bought the plantation. In early 1970
the first houses began to rise at Arawa, and by the end of the year
BCP employees were settled residents of the town.
Today there are close to 4,000 people in Arawa. In less than a
decade there should be 8,500, making Arawa the third biggest town in
the territory.
Two primary schools are complete, with one operating throughout 1971, and
a high school, technical college and business advisory centre are
on their way. Temporary police and fire facilities are operating
and the town's first allocation of commercial land has been made -
all in the town centre going to indigenous groups of businessmen.
Businesses will include a newsagent, chemist, gent's hairdresser,
shoe and clothing stores, fresh and frozen food shop, smallgoods,
hardware, fish and chips and squash courts. A modern service
station will also go ahead.
Future plans include provision for two cinemas, two department stores,
two supermarkets and a hotel, as well as a good many more smaller
businesses.
The past year has indeed seen Arawa undergo an incredible metamorphosis.
And inevitably the people who have lived under the noise of bulldozers
and construction gangs have been under pressure. They have had their
problems settling in - but they have also had the pride of knowing they
are pioneers to a new metropolis.
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