Mailu Island
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Mailu Island (sometimes known as the Toulon Island) is a small, 1.8 km long,
island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...
in Central Province,
Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
. It lies 250 km ESE from
Port Moresby (; Tok Pisin: ''Pot Mosbi''), also referred to as Pom City or simply Moresby, is the capital and largest city of Papua New Guinea. It is one of the largest cities in the southwestern Pacific (along with Jayapura) outside of Australia and New ...
.


Characteristics

Mailu is an island that has been inhabited since ancient times. It is located 8 km south of the New Guinean coast.
Bananas A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa''. In some countries, bananas used for cooking may be called "plantains", distinguis ...
,
taro Taro () (''Colocasia esculenta)'' is a root vegetable. It is the most widely cultivated species of several plants in the family Araceae that are used as vegetables for their corms, leaves, and petioles. Taro corms are a food staple in Afri ...
, yams, betel, sugarcane, as well as coconut,
areca nut ''Areca'' is a genus of 51 species of palms in the family Arecaceae, found in humid tropical forests from the islands of the Philippines, Malaysia and India, across Southeast Asia to Melanesia. The generic name ''Areca'' is derived from a name ...
and
sago Sago () is a starch extracted from the pith, or spongy core tissue, of various tropical palm stems, especially those of ''Metroxylon sagu''. It is a major staple food for the lowland peoples of New Guinea and the Maluku Islands, where it is c ...
palms grow on the island. The village is located on the NE shores. There is a smaller island right off Mailu's southern point.
Pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and ...
was made by the women on Mailu Island and traded with goods from the coast, mainly the South Cape and the Aroma people to the NW.


History

First recorded sighting of Mailu island was by the Spanish expedition of Luís Vaez de Torres, that landed on it on 24 August 1606. It was charted as ''San Bartolomé''. Spaniards reported that its inhabitants called it ''Ratiles''. All the nearby land including the coast of
New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...
was called by the Spaniards ''Magna Margarita'' to honour the wife of the king of Spain at that time Philip III, Margaret of Austria. Still today the nearby coastal village of Magarida keeps this name. This island was visited by Polish anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski in 1914. Mailu Island was also visited by Austrian anthropologist and photographer
Hugo Bernatzik Hugo Adolf Bernatzik (26 March 1897 – 9 March 1953, born and died in the city of Vienna), was an Austrian anthropologist and photographer. Bernatzik was the founder of the concept of alternative anthropology. Biography Hugo Adolf Bernatzik was ...
in 1932. Bernatzik, who published an ethnography a few years later, described Mailu as a very pleasant place and had a good impression of the Mailuans, as reliable people of a good character and skilled seafarers. He admired the buildings and the boats and took photographs of Mailu houses from the inside and outside. Bernatzik also took pictures of the islanders and their artifacts, reflecting a culture that he deemed was dying in contact with the modern world.
Frank Hurley James Francis "Frank" Hurley (15 October 1885 – 16 January 1962) was an Australian photographer and adventurer. He participated in a number of expeditions to Antarctica and served as an official photographer with Australian forces durin ...
also visited Mailu during his journeys. Between 1972 and 1974
New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
archaeologist Geoffrey IrwinGeoffrey Irwin, ''The Emergence of Mailu as a Central Place in Papuan Prehistory.'' 1985 carried out a survey of Mailu Island and the neighbouring coast where linguistically related groups, speakers of Mailuan languages, live.


See also

* Mailuan languages * Mailu language


References


External links


Picture of Mailu by Frank Hurley
{{authority control Islands of Papua New Guinea Central Province (Papua New Guinea)