This referendum produced an overwhelming non-binding vote for independence, which must yet be discussed and ratified by the national government of independent Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby.
The island of Bougainville is 120 miles long and 40 or 50 miles wide, and it is the main island in the Bougainville Archipelago of 168 islands, only a few of which are inhabited. It is the northernmost island cluster of the Solomon Islands; and it is more closely linked with the Solomon Islands, geographically, linguistically, culturally and racially, than it is with New Guinea.
There are several volcanoes on Bougainville; dormant, inactive and active.
Much of the vegetation on Bougainville is a dense and almost impenetrable tropical jungle, due in part to the Strangler Vine that was introduced by American forces during World War 2. There is also a huge variety of local animal and insect life that has adapted to a tropical lifestyle.
The island has a population of around a quarter million people who speak some twenty or thirty different languages and dialects, though English and Pidgin are the two official languages. Their current temporary capital is on nearby Buka Island, though plans are underway to return one day to Arawa, the previous capital city that was located on the central east coast of the main island.
The first settlers on Bougainville arrived from Asia some three thousand years ago. The first European explorer to visit the island was Admiral Louis Antoine de Bougainville who, with a nice touch of shall we say, modesty, named the island in his own honor in 1768.
However, no one from this expedition landed on the island due to the hostility of the islanders. Afterwards, Admiral Bougainville traversed the oceans to South America, where again with an apparently equal touch of the same modesty, he named a colorful, though mildly toxic shrub, in his own honor, the Bougainvillea.
Germany annexed the island of Bougainville as part of German New Guinea in 1899; Australian forces invaded and took over at the beginning of World War 1; Japanese forces invaded in March 1942; twenty months later the American forces arrived; after the Pacific War Australia administered the island; then in 1975 it was absorbed into the newly independent Papua New Guinea; and just last December (2019) they voted for independence.
The first wireless station on Bougainville Island was installed at Kieta on the central eastern coastline and it was taken into service in January 1916 under the Australian callsign VIU. At the time, Kieta was the main colonial town on the island, due to its previous German occupation and also because it was the center of European Christian missionary influence on the island.
Wireless station VIU was installed at Kieta by AWA from Sydney Australia on behalf of the Australian army and it became the key station in the wireless/radio network that was established on Bougainville Island in the entire era before World War 2. It was a small one man operation, and the total facility was housed in the one building on top a ridge overlooking Kieta town and its harbour.
Operator Mr. C. W. Scriven in September 1930 stated that there was just the one room for station VIU, with its one mast and one power generator. The wireless facility was installed at the top of a stairway with its 517 steps that were cut into the rocky ridge. This rock-cut stairway was the only entrance to the wireless station which was directly above a small cluster of official type buildings.
The callsign VIU was an AWA coastal callsign with a host of other similar alphabetic callsigns in the same series, such as VIA Adelaide, VIB Brisbane, VIC Cooktown and VID Darwin. Coastal station VIU was in regular routine operation with a scattered network of small wireless stations throughout Bougainville, each of which was a low power pedal facility that was developed earlier in Australia by Alf Traeger, the grandson of a German migrant family.
By the time World War 2 began in Europe (September 1939), there were a dozen or more of these small pedal powered radio stations scattered throughout Bougainville, and they had been installed at plantation offices, Christian mission stations and government offices, all mainly close to the eastern coastal areas. Station VIU also maintained regular communication with the government station at Buka Island to the north, with VJZ on Rabaul and with VIG in Port Moresby.
During the year 1939, the Australian government set up a system of coastwatchers on Bougainville Island, as a precaution if hostilities were to break out in the Pacific. The equipment in use at the time were the small AWA 3B transceivers, and with the assistance of local native peoples, they were ultimately set up in isolated jungle areas in the interior. Each coastwatcher maintained communication with the AWA shortwave station VIG in Port Moresby and they reported traffic movements on the part of enemy personnel.
On Friday January 23, 1942, station VIU was deliberately destroyed and set on fire, just a few hours before Japanese forces landed in Kieta Harbour. Most foreigners were evacuated over various routes and to different locations which were considered at the time to be quite safe.
More about the exciting radio story on Bougainville Island next time.
(AWR-Wavescan/NWS 569)
Note -
NBC Bougainville operates on 3325 kHz (0800-1300 and 2000-2200 UTC), on an irregular basis, and is noted be part of the future planning network expansions.
If Bouganville gains their independence as a seperate government, this certainly opens up the possibility of radio hobbyist logging NBC Bouganville for the first time, could claim Bougainville as a new and separate country.