Aiming high

Tourism plans for PNG’s Hindenburg Wall

Papua New Guinea’s Hindenburg Wall is one of the country’s most spectacular geographical features, a remote landform where a series of limestone escarpments stretch for 50 kilometres along the edge of the Star Mountain Range.

Sometimes described as a natural wonder of the world, the wall – in Western Province near the Ok Tedi copper and gold mine – is rarely visited, even by intrepid travellers.

That may be about to change if plans by local landowners, government authorities and the Papua New Guinea Tourism Promotion Authority (TPA) come to fruition.

The authorities want to attract more visitors to see the towering cliffs, the waterfalls, the raging rivers, the rainforest, the wide

variety of birds and the habitat that is home to rare plant and animal species.

In 2013, a Wildlife Conservation Society survey documented 1108 plant and animal species at the wall, of which at least 89 were known, or suspected, to be new to science.

A TPA spokesperson says a memorandum of understanding has been signed with the Ok Tedi Landowner Trust Fund to pursue tourist development in the region.

TPA officers are expected to visit the area soon to evaluate tourism possibilities, but it’s understood that a five-kilometre track to the wall, a resource centre for artifacts and arts and crafts, and new guesthouse accommodation have all been discussed.

Cliff-hanger … mist shrouds the 600-metre limestone Hindenburg Wall, which towers above the river Ok Kaakil in Western Province.

Walking on water … a lone trekker crosses a tributary of Ok Kaakil on the way to the base of the Hindenburg Wall (right); a section of the wall at dawn, the time of day when it is least likely to be shrouded by cloud (opposite page).