Mount Hagen

Mount Hagen is the third city of Papua New Guinea and the commercial centre of the Western Highlands, sitting at around 1,700 metres in the Wahgi valley where the Highlands Highway passes through, and its everyday draw is the market: an enormous open produce market where highland gardens bring in sweet potato, taro, greens, sugar cane, pineapple, coffee and betel nut, and where the whole economy of the valley is visible in one place. The Mount Hagen Cultural Show, held in August, brings well over a hundred groups from across the highlands and beyond in full dress and paint to perform over two days, and it is one of the two great sing-sings of the country.

History

In 1933 Mick and Dan Leahy and the government officer Jim Taylor flew over the highlands and found the large, heavily populated Wahgi Valley, then walked in with a patrol and became the first Westerners to meet the people of the Mount Hagen area; they built an airstrip at Kelua, replaced from 1934 by the Mogei Drome. The town takes its name from the old volcano Mount Hagen, named after the German colonial officer Curt von Hagen (1859-1897) (Wikipedia, Mount Hagen).

What's there

• The produce market - the enormous open market of the valley's gardens.
• The Cultural Show - the August sing-sing with over a hundred groups.
• Highland dress and paint - the wigs, feathers and body paint at the show.
• The Wahgi valley - the settled highland country around the town.

When to go

August for the Cultural Show, which is the reason most visitors come and which needs accommodation booked far ahead; May to October otherwise for the drier weather. The market runs daily.

Practical notes

Accommodation around the show sells out months ahead and prices multiply. The town itself has little for visitors outside the market and the show. Movement is by arranged transport rather than on foot. Rain falls in most months.

Nearby

Kumul Lodge lies northwest; Goroka is east along the highway.

Key facts