Buka, Papua New Guinea

Buka is located on the southern coast of Buka Island, in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, in eastern Papua New Guinea. [1] It is administered under Buka Rural LLG.[2]

Buka
Town
Buka Township, with Sohano Island (Bottom left) and Buka Airport
Buka
Location in Papua New Guinea
Coordinates: 5°25′19″S 154°40′22″E
Country Papua New Guinea
ProvinceAutonomous Region of Bougainville
DistrictNorth Bougainville District
Time zoneUTC+10 (AEST)
Main languagesNasioi, Rorovana
ClimateAf

It is the capital of the North Bougainville District, and the interim capital of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville.

It contains Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral.[3]

Geography

The city and Buka Island are separated from the northern tip of Bougainville Island by the Buka Passage. Both islands are in the northern Solomon Islands archipelago, and the only major ones not within the nation of Solomon Islands. The city is served by Buka Airport. From the way that it is separated by the deep, the narrow Buka Passage, which displays a range of about 980 to 3,000 feet (300 to 1,070 metres) wide. With Bougainville and several islands groups, it forms the autonomous region of Bougainville. A volcanic formation which measures 35 miles by 9 miles (56km by 14km), Buka has a total land area of 190 square miles (492 square km). With the island being able to rise to 1,634 feet (498 metres) in hills on the southwest, the island is densely forested in the interior.[1] Rainfall is abundant, with more than 100 inches (2,500 mm) annually. Coral reefs fringe the south and west coasts, the latter deeply indented by Queen Carola Harbour.

Buka consists of three major geological units: a plateau of uplifted coral reefs, steep hills and coral formations of post-Pleistocene age.[4]

History

Discovered by Europeans in 1768,[5] the German Empire laid claim to the island in 1899, annexing it into German New Guinea. Buka became the capital of the Bougainville Province decades later, during the 1990s Bougainville Civil War. The former, or "proper" capital of Bougainville, Arawa, was all but destroyed in 1990 as tensions reached a critical level in a civil uprising, which ended in 1997. The Bougainville government intends to return the capital to Arawa in the future.[6]

See also

References
  1. "Buka Island | island, Papua New Guinea". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 14 April 2019.
  2. United Nations in Papua New Guinea (2018). "Papua New Guinea Village Coordinates Lookup". Humanitarian Data Exchange. 1.31.9.
  3. "Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral". GCatholic. Retrieved 2019-04-13.
  4. Specht, Jim (July 1974). "Of Menak and Men: Trade and the Distribution of Resources on Buka Island, Papua New Guinea". Ethnology. 13 (3): 225–237. doi:10.2307/3773164. JSTOR 3773164.
  5. McAlpine, J. R.; Saunders, J. C.; Speight, J. G.; Heyligers, P. C.; Scott, R. M. (2010). "No. 20 Lands of Bougainville and Buka Islands, Territory of Papua and New Guinea". CSIRO Land Research Surveys. 2010 (1): 1–196. doi:10.1071/lrs20. ISBN 978-0643006515.
  6. The Report: Papua New Guinea 2016. Oxford Business Group. 2016. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-910068-64-9.

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