B’ville signboard a telling history of yesteryears

By MALUM NALU

PEOPLE who erected this sign board may have since passed on, including those inimitable radio operators who transmitted radio signals and Morse codes to ships out at sea and high frequencies (HF) to other centres, in the colonial days.

The building where the radio transmitter was housed is gone and what’s left is its foundation.

But the sign board with its writing, “Territory of Papua and New Guinea Department of Posts & Telegraphs, Radio Transmitting Station, Sohano” has survived the last half-century, including the 10-year Bougainville crisis, and is still standing today.

Sohano Island is situated at the entrance of the Buka Passage which divides Buka Island and Bougainville Mainland in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville (AROB).

In the colonial era, Sohano was the former administrative centre of Bougainville, until it was relocated to Kieta in the early 1970s and then onto Arawa in the mid-1970s. 

The Bougainville crisis resulted in the unfortunate destruction of the administrative centre of Arawa, and when services returned to Bougainville, the administration was moved to Buka, after a brief relocation in Rabaul, East New Britain.

“The name Post and telegraphs (P&T) was used in the colonial days from 1963,” Michael Unatah from Telikom planning office says.

“In 1982, it was changed to Post and Telecommunication Corporation (PTC), and it 1996, the company was split into three different identities: Telikom, Post PNG and Pangtel.”

Today, there is not much on Sohano Island, except for a few government workers, regional health headquarters, the official residence of the president of ABG and AROB’s assistant police commissioner are still on this once island paradise. 

“Sohano residents’ major mode of transport out of this laid back island is a banana boat to Buka and nearby Kokopau and onto Bougainville to work, shop and market or just a leisure tour,” Unatah says. 

“The Sohano Primary School,  which was built in the 1950s,  still serves the communities in the islands.