We dreamed of a better future': remembering the first moments of Papua New Guinea in 1975

"Fifty years ago, on the day Papua New Guinea gained independence from Australia, a young law student lowered the Australian flag and raised Papua New Guinea's for the first time. The 22-year-old, Arnold Amet, had spent the preceding years active on his university campus, debating the merits of independence, petitioning future leaders to abandon the British monarchy, and imagining what it might mean for his people to finally govern themselves."

"But while Port Moresby celebrated with ceremony and song, another community regarded the new state with suspicion. Hundreds of kilometres away, in the highlands of Tari, local men with axes descended on a government station where the new flag had just been hoisted. As soon as the PNG flag went up, they didn't pull the flag down they chopped the whole bloody pole down, recalled Chris Warrillow, who worked in Tari under the Australian administration."

"What began that day in 1975 was not just just the transfer of power from Australia, but the attempted unification of more than 800 language groups under one sovereign Papua New Guinean state. The official line was unity in diversity, yet accounts on the ground point to a more fractured transition, some echoes of which are still being felt today."

On 16 September 1975 Papua New Guinea gained independence from Australia when 22-year-old law student Arnold Amet lowered the Australian flag and raised Papua New Guinea's flag at Sir Hubert Murray Stadium in Port Moresby. Amet had campaigned for independence, petitioned leaders to abandon the British monarchy, and experienced strong emotion during the ceremony. In Tari in the highlands, local men destroyed a flagpole and resisted the new state. The independence process attempted to unify more than 800 language groups under a single sovereign state. The official message was 'unity in diversity', but many local accounts describe a fractured transition whose effects persist amid ongoing social and economic challenges.

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