Dugout canoes are the transport of choice in the remote parts of Papua New Guinea and they come in all shapes and sizes from a one person canoe to boats supporting a whole family. One common theme is they seem to be incredibly healthy for your upper body. Most of the guys rowing these canoes were built like lean muscular top athletes or gladiators as I liked to say and Christian and I agreed on our next project: create a dugout canoe and row like crazy until a PNG upper body is developed. I for one cannot wait until the year 2030 where I predict my upper body will have reached the PNG dugout canoe level! It is actually one of the things I never got around to trying in PNG, would have been fun to try and row this thing and I am sure I would have provided great amusement for everyone.
On one of our photo excursions in a tender boat we sailed slowly alongside this happy family and I created one of my favourite images from PNG. It has many key elements of PNG, gorgeous clouds, calm beautiful sea water and most of all, very happy and healthy smiling people – and of course the famous dugout canoe. I went with a different squarish crop for this image to frame the elements and also have space and big open sky. Another option is to crop tightly including cropping the mast and sail just above the clouds to heighten tension in the image.
6 Comments on “Dugout Canoes of PNG”
Nicely done there Bomontaruny…great story and pic as well!
Stay tuned for my cropped version of Volcano man tonight! 🙂
Ta matey!
how good was the water that day Flembot. I am taking my family on a trip too mate. Not in a dugout canoe but a kick arse motorhome! Nice work mate. See you in a couple of weeks.
Cheers Christian, much appreciated mate and yes the water was just perfectly crystal on that day and calm as ever. See ya soon mate, watch out for Malaria in Tassie, ya never know, one mozzie might have found it's way there 🙂
In 1973 I was doing civil aid in PNG, near Bogia. I travelled upriver in a small canoe. From memory it was called a lik lik. Is my memory correct ?
Hi Gary. I must admit I don’t remember at all what they are called!