Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (PNG; , ; ; ), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an Oceanian country that occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and its offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia. Its capital, located along its southeastern coast, is Port Moresby. The western half of New Guinea forms the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua. At the national level, after being ruled by three external powers since 1884, Papua New Guinea established its sovereignty in 1975. This followed nearly 60
Schouten Islands (Papua New Guinea) tried to return from Tidore to New Spain. The group is named after Willem Schouten, who visited the island group in 1616, before visiting and giving the same name to the Schouten Islands off the northwest coast of New Guinea, in what is now Indonesia. Schouten Islands (Papua New Guinea) The Schouten Islands are a group of six small volcanic islands in the province of East Sepik in Papua New Guinea, north of the island of New Guinea. The group is also called "Eastern Schouten Islands" or "Le Maire Islands" to separate it from unrelated Schouten Islands in Indonesia. The