Daniel Gire, an elder of Matupit Village, has lived under the shadow of Tavurvur his entire life. He remembers his home before the volcano erupted and sighs that life since has become “very, very hard”. Matupit was spared the fate of neighbouring villages — total devastation — by a roll of nature’s dice. The wind carried much of the ash towards the town centre instead.
Tavurvur and Vulcan offer mixed blessings to Matupit, which, despite obvious hardship, is starkly beautiful beside the glittering harbour. Choking ash has poured over the village for more than a decade, making farming difficult and causing ongoing damage to the mall handcrafted huts, which require constant upkeep.
Clusters of vegetable patches and the occasional pigpen dot the peninsula. Ironically, the bubbling mountain that destroyed so much of the town’s livelihood could be the very thing that saves it. In the long run, Tavurvur’s spectacular wrath might also prove the region’s lifeline, by layering rich minerals into the barren soil, and attracting hundreds of tourists drawn by the curious sight of a ghost town on the edge of the ocean. In the meantime, though, life remains tough. Fresh water and housing are daily concerns. “Permanent buildings are expensive at the moment so we get bush materials to build the houses,” says Gire.
He and other locals take a bubble of optimism from the increasing trickle of tourists to the area. In Matupit, women sell handcrafted goods on woven mats laid over the ground. Other villages are home to wartime relics and are able to charge small fees to curious visitors. For about 5 Kina, or approximately $2, tourists can visit the wreck of a Japanese Betty bomber down by the airfield, or tour the deep tunnels used to house Japanese submarines from attacks from the sky. Around Rabaul, other kinds of entrepreneurialism are growing, bringing back pockets of life to the dusty, buried town. Villagers scour the harbour foreshore for plastic bottle tops, rubber thongs and other items able to be sold for scrap. Workers can often be seen digging scrap metal from the dark earth, their mouths red from chewing locally-grown Betel nut.
