The many celebrations across Australia this past weekend demonstrates our connection to this 50-year-old nation, regardless of our culture, race of ethnicity.

PNG is in the hearts of so many: the indigenous population, the expats who served there in the Missionaries, Schools, or Administration and their children, the sojourners who came from somewhere else and stayed and whose contribution played a huge role in the commercial development of the colony and then the nation.

This novel published in 2021 becomes more relevant than ever for any who have lived in the town of Rabaul new Britain – “Between” (2021)—a story told through the voices of members of a non-Western, non-indigenous family, spanning five generations in Papua New Guinea. In the late 1800s, a young Malay woman, Koti, leaves Ambon to work in the German New Guinea town of Rabaul, making her the first of many generations for whom that cosmopolitan town is home and homeland. Over decades, both world and local events shape the family’s cultural identity. Papua New Guinea’s independence in 1975 is a pivotal moment, dividing the family between Australia and PNG. This halts the sharing of their oral history, essential for them as a minority cultural group to explain their connection to PNG. Five generations on, their stories lost, and only the disparate content of Koti’s ancient wedding chest from which to draw, see https://lilyellenpublishing.com