Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"With 7.8 million people today, Papua New Guinea (PNG) became a sovereign state in 1975 after nearly a century of British and Australian administration. Almost all of PNG’s limited development is taking place along its coasts, whereas most of the interior remains hardly touched by the changes that transformed neighboring Australia. Perhaps four-fifths of the population is part of the self-sufficient subsistence economy, cultivating root crops, raising pigs, hunting wildlife, and gathering forest products. Age-old traditions of the kind lost in Australia continue on here, protected by remoteness and the rugged terrain. Welding this disparate population into a nation is a task hardly begun, and PNG faces numerous obstacles in addition to its cultural complexity. Not only are hundreds of languages in use, but more than one-third of the population is estimated to be illiterate. English, the official language, is used by the educated minority but is of little use beyond the coastal zone and its towns. The capital, Port Moresby, contains just over 400,000 residents . . . Yet Papua New Guinea is not without economic opportunities." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 481-2]