The Ramu River is narrow and very lightly populated compared to the Sepik River with long, winding stretches full of snags and sandbars between villages. It is one of the many famous rivers in Papua New Guinea after Sepik, Fly, Strickland and of course Kikori, Purari and Markham.
The local inhabitants have lived along the river for many millenia and have depended on it as the basis for food, transport and culture. Sago is the main staple, supplemented by fish, gardens and irregular access to tradestore goods like rice.
The Sepik-Ramu basin originated as an inland sea. When tectonic and climate changes began around 6,000 years ago, the basin evolved into the present river system. The Ramu River originates from the Kratke range in the Eastern Highlands of PNG where it travels approximately 640km north -west to Bismarck Sea.
Excavations by the PNG National Museum on middens near Bosmun on the Lower Ramu show human occupation along this earlier marine shoreline transitioning to river floodplain about 1,000 years ago.
It is in Madang Province, and was discovered by the early German explorers in the 1880s.
My first trip to Ramu was in 21st January 2007, I left Port Moresby and headed to Lae and spent a night at Lae Travellers Inn. The following morning, a Monday we took off on a hire car to Ramu heading for Usino.
For me this was my first ever trip to travel by car towards Madang along the highway as I considered it to be a bit dangerous. Though I've been to Erap in 1996, I really enjoyed the scenery and along the Markham Highway all the way to Ramu Sugar. It took us about two and a half to three hours to reach Ramu Sugar to refill the vehicle and also a stop over for me especially to have look around before we continued.
After about an hour later we drove into the Usino junction passed the market and went into a friend's place to unload our stuff and wait for the other oarty coming over from Madang. As we were unloading, there was a haevy down pour but we braved the rain.
My colleague and I decided to get on a PMV and head to Madang and to see if we can meet our friends on their way to meet us or if not make it all the way to Madang and find out about the delay in them getting to Usino. However, we met them half way and got onto their vehicle and came back to Usino.
By then it was getting late so we had to make our way to Usino station and spent the same night with the District Administrator (DA.
The next day we tried to make our to Boko, to board our motorised canoe to our destination, Boko is where the Ramu Nico is based which they had already built a bride across the Ramu River to mine the nickel.
In my next posting I will inform you of my wonderful trip down Ramu River and back to POM.
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