Highway transformation

In the hussles and bussles of Port Moresby where leaders are still mingling around the corridors of power life still goes on. Port Moresby continues to see changes and its coming one after the other. As the city grows, so to are the pressures of infrastructures such as roads. Linking the Hiritano and Magi Highway the section of the Hubert Murray Highway along the NBC studios is been upgraded to cater for a double lane road. This once busy route which was the only way to Jacksons International Airport is now keeping up to its reputation as one of the first established Highway in Papua New Guinea. With its origins starting from Konedobu and runs along the famous Ela Beach, this road runs past koki/badili to two mile, three and four mile up to five mile along towards six mile 7 mile all the way past Erima. It meets the Hiritano highway and continues all the way up to Sogeri in the Central Province. What many do not notice is the name that still reminds us of colonial imperialism. Born of an Irish background his family migrated to Australia in the early 1800s and settled. Mostly educated in Sydney, Hubert wanted adventure and headed for the territory of Papua. He was appointed Acting Administrator in 1907 and Lieutenant-Governor in 1908, a position he held until his death at Samarai in 1940. When Murray first went to Papua there were 64 white residents. There were 90,000 square miles (230,000 km2) of territory, much of it unexplored jungle land, with many native tribes of whom some were cannibals and head-hunters. He set himself to understand the native mind, and found that an appeal to vanity was often more effective than punishment. Murray eventually wiped out cannibalism and head-hunting, largely by ridiculing tribes that followed those practices, and praising those that did not. His lagacy left behind is the naming of an Army barracks, the leading "international" primary school, (now called Ela/Murray International) the Hubert Murray Stadium and a highway are all named after him.