On the islands of Papua there are many volcanoes, a lot of them active,
like Turvurvur, which in 1994 destroyed the city of Rabaul, the capital of the island of New Britain.
Thanks to a false alarm in 1984, the city was ready for evacuation,
and there were no victims.
A week before the eruption, there was an earthquake, which alerted the authorities.
For four days, Turvurvur spat out lava and red hot rocks which set alight many houses.
Everything was covered in ash.
But the worst was to come later.
When reconstruction work had begun, the rains arrived,
and the ash that had been deposited on the mountain slopes was washed down by the waters,
flooding and burying the city.
Since then, the Turvurvur volcano has continued to spew out toxic gases,
and the smoke warns of the constant danger.
Any plans to rebuild the city and the port seem to have abandoned forever.
The people moved to nearby Kokopo, which is now the administrative capital.
Old Rabaul is for the time being buried beneath the ash,
a reminder of what the force of nature is capable of, and how man is powerless against it.
Rabaul was an important military enclave for the Japanese during the Second World War.
A strategic place, fundamental for such famous battles as those of Guadalcanal or the Coral Sea.
The north of this island of New Britain quickly became a fortress.
The bay was mined, the roads concealed with trees,
and some 580 kilometres of underground passages were dug,
linking the different barracks and encampments,
where they would not be seen by the allied airforces.
There are still some Japanese ships moored inside the tunnels
built along the coast, opening directly into the sea.
It is calculated that in Rabaul and the surrounding area over 20,000 tonnes of bombs fell.
In the bay, many remains of ships have been found, and thousands of torpedo shells.
In time, these metal structures have been populated by algae and corals,
which are home to a large number of marine species.
Scuba divers from all over the world come here to see them.
In any corner of the island we can find rusted war remains and cemeteries
which tell of the horror that war brought to these islands in paradise.
Dances are an essential part of the spirituality of these people.
Through dance, they invoke the spirits, to ask them for protection and favour.
The Tolai who, numbering around 180,000, are the most numerous group on the island of New Britain,
invoke the duk-duk and the tumbuan, which are spirits of the forest.
It would seem these people originally came from the Duke of York islands,
which are in the entrance to the bay of Rabaul.
On their headdresses they place small carvings
which represent the protective spirits of each clan of initiates.
These clans are governed by a council of ancients and by a chief chosen by this council.
The dancers remain apart from the rest of the people,
in a magical area which no one can enter.
They have taken on the identity of the invoked spirits
and now are not of this world.
If someone who has not been initiated disobeyed this prohibition,
the force of the spirits would possess him, and cause his death.