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
Buka, Papua New Guinea Buka was the capital of the Bougainville Province, during the 1990s Bougainville Civil War. The former, or "proper" capital of Bougainville, Arawa, was all but destroyed in 1990 as tensions reached a critical level in a civil uprising, which ended in 1997. Buka, Papua New Guinea Buka is located on the southern coast of Buka Island, in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, in eastern Papua New Guinea (country). It is the capital of the North Bougainville District, and the interim provincial capital of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville.' It contains Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral. The city and Buka