🛍️ Papua New Guinea: souvenirs
PNG is one of the world's great craft territories - bilums, Sepik carving and masks from a thousand distinct cultures. Here is what travellers bring home from Papua New Guinea, where the good versions live, and the export questions worth a look - alongside our 55 written places.
🛒 The classic buys
Bilums
The looped string bags every Papua New Guinean carries - each province has patterns; buy from the makers at craft markets in Port Moresby or Goroka; they expand absurdly and last decades.
Sepik River carving
Spirit masks, story boards, garamut drums and hook figures - the Sepik's carving villages sell direct, and Port Moresby's craft market carries river work.
Highlands hats and weaving
Knitted caps and woven armbands in clan colours.
Coffee
Highlands arabica is world-class - buy roasted from Goroka and Mount Hagen roasters or supermarket brands at origin prices.
Kina-shell and seed jewellery
Traditional wealth items as jewellery - buy modern-made pieces from craft sellers.
⚠️ Check before you buy
- Items with bird-of-paradise feathers, cassowary parts or turtle shell face export bans and import bans abroad - admire ceremonial pieces, buy the featherless craft.
- Genuinely old ritual objects need National Museum export clearance - new carvings travel clean.
- Australian biosecurity on the usual route out - declare wood, seeds and fibre; untreated wood may need fumigation certificates.
✗ Better left behind
- Feathered headdresses - the feathers are protected species and will be seized.
- Human-remains 'artefacts' occasionally offered - illegal everywhere.
- Turtle-shell items - banned.
Keep planning
Markets shift, workshops close and open, and the best souvenir is still the one with a story you were there for. Buy from makers where you can, keep receipts for anything substantial, and when a deal feels too good, it usually is.