Papua New Guinea: landmarks, animals & facts for kids

Papua New Guinea is a country in Oceania, just north of Australia. It covers the eastern half of the large island of New Guinea, whose western half belongs to Indonesia, plus hundreds of smaller islands such as New Britain, New Ireland and Bougainville. The capital is Port Moresby, on the south coast.

Papua New Guinea is famous for its rainforests and misty mountains, its birds-of-paradise and its amazing variety of peoples and languages. On the globe you can find the National Parliament House in Port Moresby and animals such as the southern cassowary, the Raggiana bird-of-paradise, the short-beaked echidna, Goodfellow's tree-kangaroo and Queen Alexandra's birdwing butterfly.

Geography and nature

A long spine of rugged mountains runs through New Guinea, and many valleys were cut off from each other for thousands of years. Mount Wilhelm, at 4,509 metres, is the highest peak. Great rivers such as the Sepik and the Fly wind through swamps and rainforest to the sea, and the coasts are fringed with coral reefs. Some of the islands have active volcanoes. The forests are full of unusual wildlife: tree-kangaroos that climb, egg-laying echidnas, giant flightless cassowaries and dozens of kinds of birds-of-paradise.

People, languages and culture

Papua New Guinea has about 840 living languages, more than any other country on Earth. To understand each other, many people use Tok Pisin, a creole language, as well as English and Hiri Motu. Most people live in villages and grow their own food, such as sweet potatoes, taro and bananas. At colourful festivals called sing-sings, groups dance in feathers, shells and face paint. Women weave bilums, stretchy string bags carried from the head. Christianity is the main religion, alongside old traditional beliefs.

History in a nutshell

People arrived in New Guinea more than 40,000 years ago, and farmers in the highlands were growing plants such as bananas and taro thousands of years ago, making this one of the first farming regions in the world. In the 1800s Germany claimed the north-east and Britain the south-east, which later passed to Australia. During the Second World War there was heavy fighting, including along the Kokoda Track. Papua New Guinea became independent on 16 September 1975 and remains a member of the Commonwealth.