For nearly seventy years, Australia was the colonial administrator of Papua New Guinea. During this time, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation established a radio service in PNG, which broadcast programs in English, modelled on the sound of its own domestic radio stations.
But in the early 1970s, as PNG set in motion its independence from Australia, the National Broadcast Corporation (NBC) was established, and began transmitting programs in Tok Pisin, the lingua franca of a newly independent Papua New Guinea.
In 1973, Papua New Guinea’s National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) was set up to coincide with the nation's independence from Australia. But, in a country where internet and television coverage is limited, and the geography is extreme, radio still has the capacity to reach people. But what happens when the radio cannot be heard?
Papua New Guinea also faces challenges greater than its mountainous terrain; it has a population marked by enormous diversity (there are eight hundred different languages spoken), as well as poverty and corruption.
Ex-pat bar Port Moresby, PNG circa 1960s (PNG National Archives)
Presenter, Radio Rabaul, PNG. (NBC Archives)
Voting in the 1982 National elections, Mt Hagan, PNG (PNG National Archives)
Tape Archives NBC