Buka, Bougainville


Buka is located on the southern coast of Buka Island, in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, in eastern Papua New Guinea. It is administered under Buka Rural LLG.
It is the capital of the North Bougainville District, and the interim capital of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville.
It contains Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral.

Geography

The city and Buka Island are separated from the northern tip of Bougainville Island by the Buka Passage. Both islands are in the northern Solomon Islands archipelago, and the only major ones not within the nation of Solomon Islands. The city is served by Buka Airport. From the way that it is separated by the deep, the narrow Buka Passage, which displays a range of about 980 to 3,000 feet wide. With Bougainville and several islands groups, it forms the autonomous region of Bougainville. A volcanic formation which measures 35 miles by 9 miles, Buka has a total land area of 190 square miles. With the island being able to rise to 1,634 feet in hills on the southwest, the island is densely forested in the interior. Rainfall is abundant, with more than 100 inches annually. Coral reefs fringe the south and west coasts, the latter deeply indented by Queen Carola Harbour.
Buka consists of three major geological units: a plateau of uplifted coral reefs, steep hills and coral formations of post-Pleistocene age.

History

Discovered in 1768, the German Empire laid claim to the island in 1899, annexing it into German New Guinea. Buka became the capital of the Bougainville Province decades later, during the 1990s Bougainville Civil War. The former, or "proper" capital of Bougainville, Arawa, was all but destroyed in 1990 as tensions reached a critical level in a civil uprising, which ended in 1997. The Bougainville government intends to return the capital to Arawa in the future.