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Australasia and the Pacific Islands, Book Reviews

Volume 95 – No. 1

ROARS FROM THE MOUNTAIN: Colonial Management of the 1951 Volcanic Disaster at Mount Lamington | By R. Wally Johnson

Canberra: ANU Press, 2020. 382 pp. US$65.00, cloth; free ebook. ISBN 9781760463557


Located on the southern rim of the “ring of fire,” Papua New Guinea (PNG) is home to some of the most active volcanoes in the world. In January 1951, Mount Lamington in what is now Oro Province began a series of spectacular eruptions. On Sunday, January 21, much of the northern side collapsed, opening a path for devastating pyroclastic flows down its slopes. Close to 3,000 people were killed, mostly local villagers but also 35 European government and mission workers based at or near the colonial government post of Higaturu. It was and remains the largest loss of life from a natural disaster in the modern history of PNG and, indeed, Australia, the colonial administrator at the time.

This superb study, written by veteran vulcanologist R. Wally Johnson, provides a comprehensive account of the Mount Lamington disaster. The book is divided into three parts dealing respectively with the prelude, eruption, and afterlife of the catastrophe. Part 1, “Tidal Wave from the West,” introduces the reader to the lands and Indigenous peoples of the Lamington area, especially the Binanderean-speaking tribes, collectively called Orokaiva, inhabiting the slopes and plains on the northern side of the mountain. Beginning in the 1890s, the Orokaiva endured and adjusted to invasions of gold prospectors, the imposition of colonial police control to end warfare, and the slow spread of Christianity. The Second World War brought devastation to the area as thousands of Japanese, Australian, and American troops fought a brutal battle from the mountainous interior to the coast.

The post-War Australian administration set up its district headquarters at Higaturu, the site of a mass execution by the Australian military of Orokaiva who had betrayed Christian missionaries to Japanese forces the previous year. Soon after, the Anglican mission established the colony’s first high school at nearby Sangara. Approximately 4,000 Orokaiva lived in villages nearby, growing their gardens in the rich soils of Mount Lamington. No one suspected they were living on the slopes of an active volcano. People were awakened to reality with the onset of near constant earthquakes and eruptions beginning on January 15, climaxing in the cataclysmic explosion six days later. Johnson opens the second and longest section of Roars from the Mountain with a vivid narrative of that disastrous week, drawing from eyewitness and survivor accounts. He does a particularly good job of detailing the struggle by the small European population outside the disaster area to provide shelter and rudimentary medical care for the wounded and dying while mounting rescue parties even as the volcano spewed massive clouds of ash and toxic gas. Hampered by the isolation of the region as well as poor communication, government relief began to trickle in over the next few days followed by more concerted efforts to recover and bury bodies and resettle survivors. Inevitably, there were missteps in the midst of urgency and confusion, but also many acts of courage. Volcanologist Tony Taylor played a particularly key role by informing search and rescue teams when it was safe to enter the blast area.

Following the disaster, the Australia-administered government established its new district headquarters at Popondetta on the plains to the north of Mount Lamington. Today, it remains the run-down capital of Oro Province, sustained in large part by massive oil palm development started in the 1980s. Mount Lamington, long quiescent, looms in the distance. In the third part of the book, Johnson considers the very different ways the disaster has been memorialized by the two populations it impacted. The colonial government built a memorial garden in Popondetta, now long abandoned, in which the bodies of the European victims were interred. For most of the Orokaiva population, on the other hand, the eruption lives on in oral traditions. Some link the event to a popular traditional myth set in the mountain, while others suggest that the destruction of Higaturu was the mountain’s response to the wartime hangings. Most consider the disaster punishment from the vengeful Christian god, impatient with the people’s resistance to conversion, a story that I heard in 1981–1982 in another corner of Oro Province. Mount Lamington is thus fused into the Orokaiva sense of identity and history.

Johnson interweaves the story of Mount Lamington with summaries of regional geological surveys and studies of the volcano itself, beginning with Taylor’s important contributions. The technical information is written in a clear accessible style and is key to understanding why, following the fateful decision not to evacuate after the eruptions started, Higaturu and surrounding areas were destroyed while some settlements even closer to the peak of the mountain were largely spared. Due to these intensive studies, the Mount Lamington disaster has become a key case study for volcanologists worldwide, as documented in an appendix listing key references since 1975.

Writing Roars from the Mountain was clearly a labour of love for Johnson, drawing upon hundreds of published and archival sources as well as personal interviews and correspondence with witnesses, scholars, and residents of Oro Province. While the book contains few unexpected revelations or interpretations, its strength lies in its comprehensiveness. This is a rare example of a scholarly work that is truly cross-disciplinary yet accessible and engaging, appealing to specialists and general readers alike. Today, the mountain is simulant, its slopes again heavily forested. There is no reason to suppose, however, that its story is finished. The PNG government lacks the resources to monitor any volcanic activity. One can only hope that should the mountain come alive again its lessons will have been learned from the past and the area will be quickly evacuated.


John Barker

The University of British Columbia, Vancouver


Last Revised: May 31, 2022
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