Biak Island

Biak sits off the northern coast of Papua and is built of raised coral limestone, which gives it caves, cliffs and a shallow reef fringe. Goa Jepang, the Japanese cave near Biak town, is a memorial to those who died in it in 1944. The Padaido islands off the south-east have reef and wrecks. Biak's position almost on the equator made it a candidate for an Indonesian spaceport, proposed repeatedly since the 1980s and not built, and there are endemic birds including the Biak paradise kingfisher.

History

Europeans first sighted Biak in 1526, when the Portuguese navigator Jorge de Menezes was forced to winter here on a voyage from Malacca to Maluku, and Portuguese maps called it Ilha de Dom Jorge and later Ilha de S. Jorge. The Spanish navigator Álvaro de Saavedra sighted it on 24 June 1528 and Íñigo Ortiz de Retes in 1545, the archipelago appears on Portuguese charts from about 1537, and in older literature the island was also called Mysore Island (Wikipedia, Biak).

What's there

• Goa Jepang - the Japanese cave and its 1944 memorial near Biak town.
• Raised coral coast - caves, cliffs and reef fringe around the island.
• The Padaido islands - reef and wartime wrecks off the south-east.
• Endemic birds - including the Biak paradise kingfisher and others.

When to go

All year; calmer seas April to October. Three days.

Before you go

The wartime sites are graves as much as attractions - behave accordingly. Facilities are limited outside Biak town. Papua travel requires checking current entry requirements before flying.

Nearby

The Padaido islands are offshore; Cenderawasih Bay is south-west.

Key facts