New Guinea
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
New Guinea, located just north of Australia, is the world's second largest island (third if you count Australia) with some 786,000 kmē of tropical land and an immense ecological value from 11,000 plant species: nearly 600 unique bird species, including the birds of paradise; over 400 amphibians; 455 butterfly species; and a hundred known mammal species. Most of these species are shared, at least in their origin, with the continent of Australia, which was until fairly recent geological times, part of the same landmass. See Australia-New Guinea for an overview.
The western half of New Guinea is called Papua (formerly Irian Jaya) and belongs to Indonesia; the eastern half, Papua New Guinea, has been an independent country since 1975.
Populated by nearly a thousand different Papua Melanesian tribal groups since 45,000 BC, it is the home of the world's oldest independent societies and a staggering number of separate languages.
In 1848, unable to establish a land base, the Dutch, British, and German governments declared unoccupied ownership of New Guinea. The first trading and administrative posts were established fifty years later and by the time of the first ever successful hostile landing in 1945 by the Japanese military, the British had transferred responsibility for eastern New Guinea to Australia, while the Netherlands had assumed the control of western New Guinea. During World War II the Papuans gave vital assistance to the Allies by carrying equipment and injured men across New Guinea.
The Dutch half became part of Indonesia in 1963. In 1975 eastern New Guinea became the independent state of Papua New Guinea. The PNG flag has a yellow bird of paradise on a red diagonal field above the southern cross stars on a black field next to the flag pole.
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