That was me. You make a fair correction, but the fact remains it is a shambles today and sadly judgement has to be on results, not effort. It gets tricky if you compare it to the sensible efforts to re-establish Japan and Germany, post-war for instance, or the Marshall Plan, with the results they had. A fraction of that cash and planning would have had a massive effect on the area. But, as you imply, it’s also very hard to get right.
Cheers!
There’s many threads on other sites about PNG so don’t want to get off the aviation side [too much] but to compare it with postwar reconstruction in Europe and Japan is not possible.
NG was run by the Germans up to WWI with the Brits in Papua, [in the early 70s there were still elders that spoke German]. After the Australians took over PNG it was administered in a low key way with copra continuing as it’s main source of income.
Aviation came into it’s own during the 30’s with Lae and Wau being the busiest airports in the world at one stage.
After WWII, which as you say the locals did not want, but then the locals in all the other places in Asia and the Pacific didn’t want it also, PNG had not changed much apart from some war wreckage left lying around.
PNG was not an industralised nation with educated [?] people to reconstruct; it was a backwater with about 500 different languages and tribes that Australia was lumbered with. Tribes used to attack each other but it was only with roads that they were actually able to go longer distances to do mischief.
It is a shambles now because law and order doesn’t exist and has been hamstrung by corruption and civil war, not due to any post war action.
Cheers
Ian
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