Précis

The last time filmmaker Bob Connolly was in PNG’s Highlands he was caught up in one of the bloodiest and most destructive tribal wars in the region’s recorded history.

Now 25 years on, Connolly returns to the Highlands for Foreign Correspondent to catch up with key characters from the masterful trilogy of documentaries he made with his late partner Robin Anderson: First Contact (1983), Joe Leahy’s Neighbours (1989) and Black Harvest (1992).

At the heart of it all is Joe Leahy, the son of an Aussie gold prospector who was the first European to make contact with the local Ganiga tribe, and a Highlands woman. As Connolly puts it: “Western-oriented, mixed race coffee millionaire surrounded by tribal subsistence farmers – fertile ground for a clash of values.”

Joe Leahy had big dreams for his coffee plantations. So too did the Ganiga people who wanted to grow rich from them. That was until the coffee price suddenly tanked and a tribal war exploded, scenes dramatically captured in Black Harvest, the last film in the trilogy.

Fast forward to 2016. Coffee prices have recovered and a quarter century has passed. So by now, surely, war will be a distant memory, and Joe Leahy and the Ganiga finally will be reaping their shared riches? That is the rough scenario Bob Connolly hopes he will find as he drives into the Highlands to pick up with Joe Leahy and Ganiga leaders.

But from day one the signs are bad. It’s harvest time. There are 60,000 coffee trees but only two pickers.

“Why do I have to give them money and all these things?” Joe is railing against the Ganiga. “I’m sick of it now.”

But Joe, now 77, can’t bring himself to leave the plantation, despite pleas from his son Jim. In turn Jim is resisting pressure from Joe - to take over when Joe dies.

“I don’t want to be Joe Leahy when I turn 80,” says Jim. “He’s angry all the time and I don’t want to be like that.”

Wrangling over the succession is imperilling the Leahy coffee dynasty - but what’s left anyway? As Connolly digs deeper it becomes clear that the old tribal war is still playing itself out, with insidious effect, long after the last arrow flew.

Long grasses
Super: NEBILYER VALLEY, PNG

Music

00:00

ARCHIVAL. Men run through grass carrying weapons

00:09

Long grasses/Feet walk through burnt ground

00:16

ARCHIVAL. Men run through grass carrying weapons. TITLE:  FAMILY MATTERS
Reporter: Bob Connolly

00:20

Connolly walks through burnt grass/ Connolly standing in burnt field

BOB CONNOLLY: Twenty five years ago this valley was a war zone. These days they burn the long grass before planting sweet potato.

00:36

ARCHIVAL.  Men with weapons swarm over field

Back then, the warriors burnt it so their enemies couldn’t hide. And nor could we. I was here filming the fighting, until it got too dangerous.

00:49

Connolly in field

And now I’ve come back to find out what happened after I left.

01:13

Joe Leahy

And to catch up with a man I got to know well, a coffee grower named Joe Leahy.

01:21

ARCHIVAL. Joe with workers at Kilima

When I first met Joe his coffee plantation, Kilima, was a thriving concern with 100,000 trees and an army of pickers.

01:32

Female plantation workers/

These days it’s a very different picture.

01:44

Joe assigns workers

JOE LEAHY: [assigning a couple of workers] “Okay, you two go to the back block”.

01:51

Woman picking coffee. Connolly picks coffee

BOB CONNOLLY: While it may be the tail end of the season, there are just two pickers. Out here among the trees, it’s not hard to see why.

01:57

Women pickers

[talking to the pickers] “When I was filming, the trees were laden with cherries”.

WOMAN PICKER: “Now the trees are old”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “Old?”

WOMAN PICKER: “They went bush”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “During the war?”

WOMAN PICKER: “Yes, we lost them in the war”.

02:10

ARCHIVAL. Women picking coffee

BOB CONNOLLY: It’s a far cry from the glory days when Kilima was a licence to print money and Joe was a millionaire. I know because I was there.

02:27

Photo. Connolly and Anderson

With my partner Robin Anderson, I spent years at Kilima,

02:41

Photo. Connolly with tribal man

documenting the relationship between Joe Leahy and the

02:45

Photo. Joe Leahy. Tribal people in b/g

Ganiga tribe, traditional owners of Joe’s plantation land.

02:48

ARCHIVAL. Line of Hageners walking past camera

But there’s more to Joe Leahy than coffee.

02:53

ARCHIVAL. Michael Leahy with young tribal woman

His father was the Queensland gold prospector Michael Leahy, the first European to enter these densely

03:01

ARCHIVAL. Hageners pass camera. Super:
“First Contact” 1982

populated valleys in the 1930s and make first contact with their people. In our film, First Contact,

03:08

Michael Leahy with local people

the highlanders relate how they took the strangers to be spirits. But not for long.

03:16

ARCHIVAL. Women talking about sex with white men (from First Contact)

WOMAN: [from First Contact] “We had sex together, then we knew they were men. That’s right. Not spirits, just men”.

03:23

ARCHIVAL. Joe Leahy. (from First Contact

JOE LEAHY: [from First Contact] “They’re lucky to have me in this bloody place. They need me, I need the bastards. They need me”.

BOB CONNOLLY: Although never recognised by his father,

03:35

ARCHIVAL.  Joe with workers
(from Joe Leahy’s Neighbours)

Joe prospered and when we met in 1980 the coffee planter was successful enough to be having trouble with the tribe who’d sold him his land and still lived all around him.

03:42

ARCHIVAL. Madang. Super:
 Joe Leahy’s Neighbours 1988

MADANG:  “He never gave us 50%. It all belongs to him. Say he’s made 800,000 profit. Well, now we’d like to make 800,000”.

03:55

ARCHIVAL. Joe and Popina at Kaugum (from Joe Leahy’s Neighbours)

BOB CONNOLLY: So Joe helped them start their own plantation.

04:15

JOE LEAHY: [from Joe Leahy’s Neighbours] “With good prices you’ll be up to your necks in money”.

04:20

POPINA: “My tribe will be rich and they’ll have us to thank”.

JOE LEAHY: “True!”

04:24

ARCHIVAL. Warfare.  Super:
Black Harvest 1992

04:30

BOB CONNOLLY: But on the eve of the harvest season – catastrophe. The coffee price collapsed, the Ganiga were caught up in a vicious tribal war and a fortune in unpicked coffee rotted on the trees.

04:34

Joe Leahy interview (from Joe Leahy’s Neighbours, crying])

JOE LEAHY: “My people, my land. You don’t know how much it’s hurting me”.

04:50

ARCHIVAL. Wrecked Kilima shed (from Black Harvest)

BOB CONNOLLY: Finishing on this tragic note, Robin Anderson and I returned to Australia.

05:03

Connolly returning. View from plane/Connolly on tarmac/driving through town

Twenty five years later, I’m back to find out what’s happened since. I’m told the war went on for years with far reaching consequences for both Joe Leahy and his neighbours, the Ganiga.

JIM LEAHY: [driving through town] “And then that riot came through and all

05:13

Connolly with Jim Leahy in car driving through town

the windows, you look at all the shop windows, the ones that didn’t have metal grills, all gone”.

05:29

BOB CONNOLLY: My first point of contact is Joe’s son, Jim.

JIM LEAHY: “This is our little place”.

05:39

Jim Leahy interview

BOB CONNOLLY: “What’s his life been like since then?”

JIM LEAHY: “Hard. Bloody hard. It’s been a struggle. The glory days and the young days when you saw the coffee, you know, flowing through the mills and that, it’s never been that again for Dad. It’s just been a continuous struggle”.

05:47

Jim with children

BOB CONNOLLY: At school in Australia when I was here last, Jim works in PNG’s natural gas industry and lives in Mount Hagen with his wife Rita and children.

06:06

Jim and Connolly driving to plantation

JIM LEAHY: [driving along road] “This was a beautiful valley Bob, a beautiful valley”.

BOB CONNOLLY: He’s driving me the 35 kilometres out to Joe’s plantation in the Nebilyer Valley.

06:24

“So this was basically a war zone for 10 years?”

JIM LEAHY: “Yeah”.

06:34

Man on side of road

MAN YELLS FROM ROAD: “Bob Connolly!”

JIM LEAHY: “There you go, Bob Connolly”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “Did he just say that?”

JIM LEAHY: “Yes he did”.

06:38

Connolly greets locals

BOB CONNOLLY: Robin Anderson and I spent a total of two and a half years living among these people, in good times and bad.

06:45

[greeting the locals] “You’ve always been in my thoughts… and in my heart.

[cheer from locals]

06:59

Driving. People waves from side of road

Music

07:08

Driving. Crossing river

[man yells greeting from side of road] “Someone knew me.

[driving on unstable road] The road’s not for the faint-hearted.
 

07:16

Paraka greets Connolly

BOB CONNOLLY: “Morning. Yeah Paraka!”

Paraka’s brother, Joseph Madang was killed in the fighting.

07:23

Connolly and Paraka hug at car

PARAKA: [hugging/crying] “Happy to see you”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “Sorry about Madang. Thinking back to all those old times, eh?”

07:35

Connolly greets Joe at wife

We finally catch up with Joe at the old house.

07:50

Pig feast

He’s killed a pig in our honour. Jim’s the only one of Joe’s immediate family to stay in the highlands – the rest settled in Australia.

07:58

Connolly and Joe Leahy in coffee plantation.

Music

08:26

BOB CONNOLLY: After lunch, Joe takes me on a tour of the plantations. Coffee’s a high maintenance crop and this is what happens when a plantation is neglected for 25 years.

JOE LEAHY: “Now look it’s just full of rubbish and all this, but what can I do?

08:34

Because once upon a time this was all loaded, back in ah… you remember Bob? Now look at all these scungy trees. But I can’t afford to put fertiliser on them”.

08:56

BOB CONNOLLY: Even though the coffee price has gone up, the Ganiga have done nothing to re-establish their plantation. After the war,

09:11

Abandoned vehicles

no bank will touch them - and the same applies to Joe.

09:22

Connolly and Joe Leahy in overgrown coffee plantation.

[breaking through the bush] “Gee it’s a long time since you’ve been back to it”.

Hidden here somewhere is Joe’s wet factory, where the ripe cherries were crushed to produce beans.

“Oh Joe this is sad. Hey? I filmed you standing right here. I remember.

09:26

ARCHIVAL. Joe Leahy at plantation. Wet factory.

Remember that great you know five tonnes of cherry going in. Do you remember? Yeah because I remember this, this was an absolute hive of activity”.

JOE LEAHY: “Do you remember all this?

09:46

Present. Joe Leahy with Connolly at abandoned wet factory

The vat was all full all the time during the coffee season”.

10:03

BOB CONNOLLY: This was once the beating heart of Kilima.

JOE LEAHY: “After how many years?

10:11

Twenty five years and all gone bush now”.

10:17

Joe and Connolly walk to church

[singing]

10:21

Church service. Singing

10:37

BOB CONNOLLY: With Kilima moribund very few Ganiga seem to be working these days, but they have been busy building fundamentalist churches – 11 of them to be exact.

10:50

This one’s located on Kilima, with Joe’s blessing.

10:59

Church singing. George in church

One regular among the congregation is George Pintabea, a member of the Kulga Poi Penambe tribe, traditional enemies of the Ganiga. It was George’s axing while he was working for Joe that sparked the tribal war between the Kulga and the Ganiga.

11:03

ARCHIVAL. George bandaged in hospital. (from Black Harvest)

Back then we filmed him recovering from emergency surgery in Mount Hagen Hospital.

11:27

GEORGE PINTABEA: “As I realised that they were gathering to kill me, I tried to run away but I was chopped in the leg which made me a… which crippled me and I couldn’t run, so I fell to the ground and that was followed after about another ten more chops by axes”.

11:34

George shows Connolly scars

BOB CONNOLLY: Twenty five years on, life hasn’t got any easier.

11:57

GEORGE PINTABEA: “That’s right, they chopped my kneecap off”.

BOB CONNOLLY: [showing his scars] “Oh that’s the scars. They chopped your kneecap off”.

GEORGE PINTABEA: “Yeah they chopped the kneecap. It was smashed”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “Oh God”.

GEORGE PINTABEA: “That’s why it disables me.

12:03

There were two axes in the chest, the chest also, the sides, the ribs”.

BOB CONNOLLY: The Ganiga eventually paid George compensation for almost killing him but the scars go deeper than the ones we can see.

12:17

GEORGE PINTABEA: “But I wish I was dead”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “Do you really?”

GEORGE PINTABEA: “Yeah I wish I was dead.

12:32

George and Connolly

I feel like killing myself or hanging up, but then I think of the kids and... no… life is really worthless for me with all these problems. Everybody, when I go around they said oh because of him being axed we lost these men and we lost our properties and all that”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “What they blame you for being axed?”

GEORGE PINTABEA: “Yes, that’s what’s happening all around this place”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “They blame you because the Ganiga attacked you”.

GEORGE PINTABEA: “Attacked me. Because you were chopped, the fight started and we lost lives”.

George and Connolly continues

BOB CONNOLLY: “Well when are they going to let it go?”

GEORGE PINTABEA: “They will never… until I die. Until they don’t see me any more”.

13:11

George departs

BOB CONNOLLY: Now just so we’re clear, George says that when the Ganiga compensated him, the Kulga and Poi Penambe – his own people – took most of it from him because his axing brought them misfortune as well.

13:22

ARCHIVAL. Bodies...wounded man/ Young boys painted white and crying/ Man with mother

The war set off by the attack on George didn’t just spell the end of the two coffee plantations, it condemned the whole valley to ten long years of bloodshed and mayhem. Aid posts, government offices, schools – all destroyed. A whole generation of children missed out on an education.

13:42

Primary school exterior and teacher in classroom

But here’s a positive sign. In 2016 the Ganiga had their first ever primary school, built with Australian aid money, staffed by a trained teacher. There’s just one problem.

14:13

Connolly with teacher

BOB CONNOLLY: “Now I’ve heard that you haven’t been paid for a long time”.

TEACHER: “No I haven’t been paid.

14:33

It’s because of the government’s… like we are trying to put in papers, but the delay in the payroll system, that’s delaying us for some good number of years,

14:37

Kids in classroom

like two to three years”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “Three years?”

TEACHER: “Three years”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “But you kept on teaching”.

TEACHER: “I kept on teaching because of my students here and it is my community and I have to serve it and that’s what I have to do.

14:46

Connolly with teacher

And there is no money for us. Like we haven’t got any chairs here or desks to sit down the students here and they are sitting on the floor and as a teacher I have to have a lot of books to support me for my teaching”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “You buy them yourself?”

TEACHER: “I buy them myself. They cost me a lot of money, like two to three thousand Kina”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “Where do you get that from?”

TEACHER: “That’s my own money which I have saved. My own savings.

14:59

[continues]

It’s really bad”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “Yeah. All due to the fight?”

TEACHER: “Due to the fight, yeah”.

15:28

Connolly greets Thomas Thyme. They walk along road

BOB CONNOLLY: Thomas Thyme was our interpreter in 1990 and one of the few back then with a secondary education. He’s now a clan leader of the Ganiga, and like most people I meet this time, he’s also unemployed.

15:34

Even the people who were successful back then, don’t seem to have jobs any more.

[walking along the road] “This is very nice putting flowers,

15:58

Walking along road

you know, along the roadside and that makes the road look pretty, but where are the businesses after twenty five years? Where are the workshops, where are the… you know where’s the, where, how are people earning money? I don’t see it”.

16:06

[shot continuous]

THOMAS THYME: “Well we can put workshops, but there’s no vehicles in the village to come to the workshop and also to operate the workshop, there’s no power coming through. So how can we operate the workshop

16:21

when we have no electricity and basically we don’t have government services so… that lets us no opportunity for us to do business”.

16:32

Walking continues

BOB CONNOLLY: “Why hasn’t the government helped you? I mean 25 years later, it’s exactly the same as when I left”.

THOMAS THYME: “Yes”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “No water, no electricity, no sealed road, no school or at least, you know, the school they’ve got no money. So what’s happened?”

16:40

[shot continuous]

THOMAS THYME: “That’s a very good question”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “Millions and billions of dollars have come into Papua New Guinea”.

THOMAS THYME: “That’s a very good question”.

16:58

White van down road

BOB CONNOLLY: In 25 years no government services, no bank money for development, no one apparently working.

17:05

Joe Leahy greets children

And at 77, the once indomitable Joe Leahy a spent force.

17:15

Jose in kitchen

JOE LEAHY: “There’s two different worlds I’m trying to bring together and the white man’s ways were different and

17:25

Joe Leahy and Connolly in kitchen

these black man’s ways were different too. So I was just the meat in the sandwich and that’s how I lost everything”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “So you had no money”.

JOE LEAHY: “No money! Nothing at all”.

17:34

BOB CONNOLLY: “And you used to be a multi-millionaire”.

JOE LEAHY: “I was once, once upon a time, but then everything just cut off”.

17:47

Joe and Connolly overlooking Kilima

BOB CONNOLLY: Many years ago Joe fell seriously ill and fearing the worst, invited his son Jim to take over Kilima.

JIM LEAHY: “So we put everything we had into it and then he realised he actually was not going to drop dead and it came to a header one day and he just came down to me

17:54

Jim Leahy interview

one day and said look, you know Jim, you know, basically I want this place back… you know, I’m not dead yet. And I said well I know you’re not bloody well dead you know, you’re still bloody here giving me a freakin’ headache”.

18:14

BOB CONNOLLY: “So you’d put how many year’s work into it?”

JIM LEAHY: “Oh we put, put a few good years into it”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “And how much money?”

JIM LEAHY: “We would have put, you know all up I can say I reckon I put in about a hundred thousand”.

18:27

[shot continuous]

BOB CONNOLLY: “Did he pay you back?”

JIM LEAHY: “Of course he’s not going to pay me back, Bob”. [laughter]

18:37

Jim and Joe on porch

BOB CONNOLLY: “So it hasn’t affected your relationship with him?”

18:42

Jim Leahy interview

JIM LEAHY: “No, in fact it actually gave me clarity Bob, because when I walked away I realised that I treasure my relationship with dad more than I do the money, so the one thing that’s really driving him crazy is I won’t go back out there and help him.. because I said, ‘Dad, we can’t work together.’ That’s the bottom line. We will never be able to work together, so you know I love you and I’m going to work on my relationship with you”.

18:48

BOB CONNOLLY: “What’s the future of a place like Kilima?”

19:15

Interview continues

JIM LEAHY: “Yeah I don’t like answering that too much because I’m the only one here from the family, I’m the only one left here with dad. Do I want that obligation? Do I want to go back and continue what... what dad did out there? You know, it’s very hard to answer that right now, Bob”.

19:19

ARCHIVAL.  Arresting coffee thief. (from Black Harvest)

BOB CONNOLLY: Running a coffee plantation in the New Guinea Highlands is no job for old men and my friend Joe Leahy has grown old.

JOE LEAHY: (young Joe after catching thief) He steal the bloody coffee...! The same mobs, last year and this year.

19:38

BOB CONNOLLY: Back in 1990 this is how he dealt with a thief, bundling him off to prison.

JOE LEAHY: [young Joe, shoving man into car] “Get in and hold the thief”.

19:53

Joe with workers about pig theft

JOE LEAHY: “Get the thief to return my pig and we’ll talk”.

BOB CONNOLLY: These days he doesn’t seem to have the same authority.

20:05

JOE LEAHY: You’re saying I should go and look for this thief? He’s here working with you and he’s stolen my pig. So what am I supposed to do? If you want to support this thief, go ahead. I’m fed up with you.

20:12

Fuck the bastards. I’m sick of it now.

20:33

Joe walks off down path

I will fucking leave. Whoever wants to buy this, can buy it. There’s no law and order

20:39

and I’m getting old. I’m 77 now. Won’t be long. I’ll be… I think I give up. I just wash everything out and I just… because the tribal fighting was there. I’m a businessman and the government didn’t help and all these people didn’t help so why should I worry about all this? I’m not the prime minister running this country”.

20:48

Jim Leahy interview

JIM LEAHY: “It’s getting a lot tougher down there. It’s getting a lot harder

21:23

Joe in chair on porch

and when you’re in a tribe, everyone feels like they have ownership of what we own. Everyone says it’s still part of theirs you know?”

21:27

Jim Leahy interview

BOB CONNOLLY: “So it’s tribal”.

JIM LEAHY: “Tribalism, yeah. It’s hard, mate.

You’re forced to live in two incompatible systems of rule

21:40

or law and that’s the element of confusion that we’re living in right now.

21:48

Je addressing workers about pig theft

I don’t want to be Joe Leahy when I turn 80 you know? And the fire’s been taken out of his sail down there, you know? You know he’s angry all the time and he’s upset and I don’t want to be like that. I want to give my kids a better opportunity and I believe we could be the last of the Leahys in the Nebilyer, you know my generation – there’s a high probability of that”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “Are you happy to live out the rest of your days

21:54

Joe Leahy interview

here at Kilima? Is that what you want to do?”

JOE LEAHY: “Well I... I established it, and I can’t leave this place. I can’t”.

22:25

Kitchen

BOB CONNOLLY: “You can’t leave this place?

JOE LEAHY: “No, I won’t”.

22:35

Rita and Jim talk to Joe in kitchen

RITA LEAHY: “See we all want you to spend the rest of your life... not fighting here”.

BOB CONNOLLY: For a long time now, Jim and Rita have been trying to persuade Joe to leave Kilima

22:42

and spend the rest of his days with them.

RITA LEAHY: “Are you happy Dad, where you’re at right now? Are you happy?”

JOE LEAHY: “Yeah, I am. Yeah well… what else can I do?”

22:52

RITA LEAHY: “Do you feel like they’re looking after you as much as you’ve given back to them?”

23:04

JIM LEAHY: “You’ve got to give yourself a rest Dad, you’ve got to give yourself a break, you know?”

JOE LEAHY: “Well maybe… yeah it’s just okay for me, but here, I think the place itself is keeping me going. At least I’m doing something”.

RITA LEAHY: “It gives you purpose”.

JOE LEAHY: “Yeah, it gives me something to live for and doing something”.

23:10

Rita and Jim talk to Joe in kitchen continues

JIM LEAHY: “You’ve got to find peace with yourself Dad. I think that’s the main thing that we’re all worried about, is if you don’t find peace with yourself. I think that’s what would make us happiest. You’ve got to stop fighting mate, you’ve just got to stop fucking fighting and do something for yourself.

23:29

And Dad, all we want to tell you is we love you. That’s it. We, we want you more than Kilima wants you [upset]. Kilima wants your life, but we just want you”.

23:49

Koropen

BOB CONNOLLY: “If Jim doesn’t take over from Joe, could an outsider buy Kilima?”

KOROPEN: “No outsider could come here. There’d be trouble”.

24:03

Connolly with Koropen on porch

BOB CONNOLLY: This is Ganiga Koropen. His father was the original land owner of Kilima.

24:25

“But listen Koropen, Joes got a 99 year lease. There’s 50 years left. Now in Australia and everywhere else, if you’ve got a 50 year lease, you can sell it to whoever you please. But you’re saying, ‘Not here’?

24:31

KOROPEN: “No outsider. When the father dies, the son takes over. That’s the way it is”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “And custom”.

KOROPEN: “Custom”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “And law?”

KOROPEN: “Law also”.

25:04

[shot continuous]

BOB CONNOLLY: “But it’s not the law of Papua New Guinea. It’s your own law. The law of Papua New Guinea says that I can sell Kilima to whoever wants to buy it.

25:18

CU Machete

That’s your nation’s law”.

25:36

Connolly and Koropen on porch continues

KOROPEN: “If the big tree Joe falls down, the little tree Jim takes his place”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “So people still believe this?”

KOROPEN: “Yes”.

BOB CONNOLLY: “Everyone in the Highlands?”

KOROPEN: “Everyone”.

ARCHIVAL. Ganigas

BOB CONNOLLY: Two incompatible systems of law – one imposed by outsiders within living memory, the other thousands of years old. That’s how long the highlanders had been farming these fertile grasslands

25:54

Kilima GVs

before Jim Leahy’s grandfather arrived on the scene. They will continue to farm them and in so doing, help underpin the nation’s uncertain entry into the modern world.

“When you look at Papua New Guinea and the future, do you see a glass half empty or a glass half full?”

JIM LEAHY: “I see a glass

26:11

Jim Leahy interview

that’s overflowing… but too many bloody straws in there. [laughter]

26:34

Aerials/ Faming GVs

And that’s why we can keep going. That’s why Papua New Guinea can keep going, because it’s so damn wealthy. This place is so beautiful. We’ve got everything. You know you walk around and drop a seed and it grows. Never say Papua New Guinea’s half empty. It’s not. It’s overflowing. It hasn’t stopped. Papua New Guinea hasn’t stopped giving to its people”.

26:40

Connolly with Joe/Connolly looking out over Kilima

BOB CONNOLLY: The saga of Joe Leahy and Kilima may end with Joe, but the Ganiga will still be here, growing their own food, building their own houses – a self-sufficiency that has always cushioned them in times of war and peace

27:11

Music

27:33

Credits:

Reporter: Bob Connolly
Camera: Stephen Dupont
Editor: Stuart Miller

Executive producer: Marianne Leitch
abc.net.au/foreign

© ABC 2016

27:39

27:56