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Our second port of call on our Papua New Guinea trip was the tiny speck of land that is Doini Island. Doini Island is in the Milne Bay Province of PNG and is a privately owned island. Now all these facts have been thoroughly researched by the feral traveller, yeah in between snorkling I practised my pidgin with some of the locals and this is what I came up with. It appears that Doini Island is owned by an Australian bloke and he is trying to develop a bit of a low key resort on the island, now that sounds a little dodgy but apparently he is doing good things and the locals seem happy that he has bought work to their little island, and consequently some money has flowed in for schools, medicine and other assorted necessities that us fat dim dims take for granted. Now having a huge cruise ship suddenly lob up in front of your village one morning must be fairly daunting for the locals, but talking to them it appears that they still think its a positive thing. The influx of a 1000 or so pasty white people seems to give them much to laugh about, and at the same time they satisfy the cruise punters fascination for wood carvings and shells (I’m buggered if I know how they get them through border security?). I don’t want to bag the cruise passengers too much because their hearts are generally in the right place, a lot of them bringing school supplies over, and more still leaving donations for the local schools or medical centre.
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| Things are decidedly low key on Doini Island (sorry about the water on the lens, I was using my waterproof camera after we had finished snorkelling). |
Our day on Doini Island started with the usual tender ride off the ship, now normally these tender trips are tedious to say the least, you only get a day in these amazing places so you want to get off the ship as quick as possible and not sit in the Marquis dining room waiting for your tender number to come up. With the average age of the punters on this cruise approaching three figures it was always going to be a slow process getting them safely on and off the bucking tenders, so the cunning plan was for us to head off first thing in the morning, the theory being that most of the zimmer frames would still be securely parked up at the breakfast buffet and we would get a clear run at the tenders, and bugger me if it didn’t work! We were on the island before most of the punters had started their third helping of breakfast.
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| Like all children the locals kids love the camera, and the camera seems to like them too. |
On Doini Island we disembarked from the tenders at the wooden jetty that services the resort, and then walked straight into a singing, dancing, extravaganza. All the locals as well as a large collection from nearby islands were here to greet us, the children in particular showing boundless energy and enthusiasm with their singing and dancing. If any one reads this waffle and is considering heading over on a cruise them make sure you bring some supplies for the children, books, pencils, pens, balls, and my favourite the frisbee. Most things we take for granted are like gold over here, and another tip is to change a bit of money into kina, the PNG currency, as these small islands have got nowhere to change Aussie to kina then our money is almost worthless to them, oh yeah give your money exchange outlet a bit of time to get some kina in as its not exactly in high demand. Anyway, after passing through the singing and dancing we headed off to find somewhere to go snorkelling.
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My highly scientific method of finding the best place to snorkel consists of finding somewhere safe for our gear while checking out the water to see if I can spot any reefs.....and if that doesn't work I ask a local:)
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Now this information is compiled from a feral
sample size of one, so take it or leave it but we found the best snorkelling few hundred metres to the right of the jetty, I can’t give you a north or south as I’m not in the habit of carrying my compass around on snorkelling excursions on tropical islands. The snorkelling here was good, there had been a lot of rain around but the visibility was still fairly good and the coral was within easy reach of the beach. The other good thing about Doini Island was that the water was not too warm so it was actually refreshing to jump in and not like submerging myself into a hot bath as it sometimes is in the tropics. Now I could wax lyrically about all the tropical fish that we saw but I’d be making it up, I’ve got no idea about our piscatorial mates real names so we’ll just leave it at colourful fish, anyway you get the idea.
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The coral was very good on Doini Island, this is plate coral.
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After a great morning spent snorkelling I decided to take the track that circumnavigates the island. Now I’d come prepared for a hike, I was wearing my hiking havaianas along with my Bear Grills boardies. So leaving Sam on the beach to have an afternoon nanna nap under the tropical trees I set off towards my first destination, The Rock Pool. The good thing is that once I left the beach in front of the resort the rest of the punters dropped right off, infact I hardly saw any other dim dims for the remainder of the walk, although initially I wasn’t alone as I bumped into Kez, an English girl who worked for the cruise company doing information presentations on the ship. So anyway with Kez never having checked out this part of the island and me being a newcomer we didn’t really know what The Rock Pools actually were, it turns out that The Rock Pools are a series of gulches cut into a rocky headland. Gingerly climbing over the sharp black rocks in my thongs I spied a spot where I figured that I could enter the water without being cut to ribbons on the sharp rocks, there’s never a bad time for a swim in the tropics and this crystal clear swimming here didn’t break my theory.
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No high tech GPS navigation aids today, I took a photo of the map at the jetty to help me navigate my way around the island.
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Heading out towards the Rock Pool, there are plenty of spots that you can get down to the pristine beach.
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| My little swimming spot at the Rock Pool, you need to be a little careful here with the sharp rocks and the waves surging in and out of the pool, but the water makes it all worth while. |
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Leaving The Rock Pool we continued on our afternoons journey, Kez knew some of the locals from previous visits so was sometimes stopping for a chat, I was keen to get to the next stunning spot, the Love Beach (I’m not making this up). The Love Beach was the prettiest beach that I saw on the island, the waves crashing onto the pristine white sand are what I think when I close my eyes an think tropical island, Kez turned up a couple of minutes after me with a couple of coconuts (no that’s not a ephenisium!) that she’d bought off one of the locals. How cool was this, drinking from a coconut on a beautiful tropical beach. After drinking our coconuts and having a swim it was time to head off again (we had to get back by 4:30pm to catch the last tender). After climbing back up to the circuit track we continued on through the beautiful tropical forest, arriving at a junction on the back side of the island I said goodbye to my new friend Kez and headed off up to the Skull Cave.
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The track around the island is easy to follow and well sign posted.
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| Love Beach (no I'm not making this up), only self love for the feral beachcomber today though! |
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After a short but reasonably steep ten minute climb I got to one of the strangest spots that I’ve ever experienced. As the name suggest the Skull Cave houses a collection of human skulls, its a fairly macabre sight to have a collection of human skulls peering out of the cave at you, it was even more freaky to see that one of the skulls was that new that it still had some of its beetle nut stained teeth in it! Apparently people of significance in the local village are buried standing up with their heads covered with a pot, as the body rots the head eventually drops off the body and is then removed and placed into the Skull Cave.
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| The last bit of the track up to the Skull Cave involves a few steps. |
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The Skull Cave.
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| Hmmm....there was still some beetle nut stained teeth in this one. |
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I was now getting a little short of time so I headed off on the rest of my island circumnavigation with a little more urgency, the only thing I had that resembled a map was a photo on my camera that I’d taken before I left the resort area, it had taken a couple hours to get here and my rudimentary map appeared to show that I was about halfway around the circuit. With the last tender leaving in less than two hours I decided that now would be a good time to crank up the pace, I had visions of me negotiating with one of the locals to take me in their banana boat to our next stop in Kirawina. Luckily for me I’d taken in most of the main points of interest on the circuit so, shuffling along like a sloth on beetle nut, I was soon back on the resort side of the island comforted to see the ship still at anchor off the bay. Since saying goodbye to Kez I’d only bumped into a couple of other dim dims so I was a little surprised as I beach combed my way back to the resort to meet up with Carol, one of the ladies that Sam and I had been dining with on the ship, so once again I had great company as we finished the walk back together. I actually got back with around an hour to a spare and after locating Sam there was still time for another swim before we packed up all our sandy gear, we were a little bit burnt, a little gritty, a little sweaty and a little thirsty but it had been a great day on a beautiful island well off the normal tourist radar.
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The track along the back of the island is a little further away from the coast.
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The Dirt.
This was another of our cruises with Princess Cruises, they definitely aren’t for serious adventurers but they do allow you to get a little off the beaten track occasionally while at the same time making the experience very comfortable. Doini Island is a magic spot, if everything aligns in the future I can see Sam and I coming back here to stay for awhile at the
resort. The island has a real low key vibe and the snorkelling was great, with a bit more time I’m sure that there would be plenty more hidden spots to discover. Oh yeah, dim dim is the pidgin term for white man, in case you were wondering:)
Relevant Posts.
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| Heading back towards the resort. |
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| Dioni Island receding from view at the end of a great day. |
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