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
Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea the mouth of the Mambare River in 1899: by 1901 there were eleven stations along the coast of north Papua (in what are now Northern (Oro) and Milne Bay Provinces) and Anglican influence had extended along 480 km of coast. The Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul in Dogura, Milne Bay Province, is the largest Anglican church in Papua New Guinea. It seats 800, was consecrated in 1939 three years before the outbreak of war in the South Pacific and survived the traumatic Japanese occupation of Papua New Guinea during World War II. The Japanese had put ashore troops in