In the literature of Australia, our vast and mysterious nearest neighbour – now Papua New Guinea – has had a more significant place than is usually recognised. It was in this country that James McAuley saw war service and later converted to Catholicism. About New Guinea he wrote some of his most beautiful poetry, as when he summoned a bird of paradise to ‘[leave] your fragrant rest on the summit of morning calm’. Numerous novels – sagas of Japs and the Jungle – issued from their authors’ wartime experiences, among them Tom Hungerford’s The Ridge and the River (1952) and David Forrest’s The Last Blue Sea (1990).
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