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More on PNG scrappies....

Posted by Tony on Tue Dec 18, 2001 05:29:57 AM

From the Pacific wrecks site....

So, this Melbourne businessman, who is soooooooo interested in preserving history?

Tony


Scrap Dealing in Papua New Guinea
Report from recent traveler, Peter Weaver from Arizona USA

Last month a local scrap dealer in Lae, Papua New Guinea, shipped in by barge a vast amount of WW2 Allied aircraft wreckage from where it was buried SWW of the coastal town of Finschafen in 1945.

Most wreckage is largely unrecognizable, including large globules of of smelted aluminum. The new scrapyard is about six feet high and occupies about half a soccer field. However, there are clearly visible and recognizable aircraft components as well, including stainless steel ammunitions belts, turbocharger ducting, Liberator and A-20 gun turrets, complete A-20 tail sections, elevators, rudders, servo units and undercarriage legs from all kinds of USAAF aircraft.

The owner, from a village near Lae, is Francis Poringi who last month went to Port Moresby and asked the National Museum for approval to scrap the pile. He was instructed not to, but on the other hand customs officers have told him he cannot export the parts either. Poringi will now proceed to scrap the material, as he did with a similar collection last year.

It is possible that Poringi has undertaken the excavation under the instructions of a businessman in Melbourne who has previously recovered poor condition P-38's and P-47's from the same burial place at Finschafen. If this is the case, then Poringi has probably recovered the wreckage in anticipation of exporting it, but has run out of money or permission, and left Mr Poringi with the unsightly public spectacle.

The scrapyard is on Unitech road with no fence around it and has become highly visible.

The potential scapping of this material is a disgrace, and reveals again a lack of political will in PNG to deal with so-called 'scrap' merchants.

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