White Sand from South Africa ?

Ela Beach is relaxing place for ordinary people in Port Moresby, and I personally call it as Waikiki of Port Moresby, because it is made up of imported white sand.

The difference is Hawaii imports white sand for tourist purpose, but PNG is not.

The story goes back to early 1900s, when Gold was produced near Port Moresby.

At that time, there was no Gold refinery in PNG so the Gold had to be shipped all the way to South Africa for refining. But there was no return cargo to PNG, and it is very dangerous to travel the rough Indian & Pacific Ocean with empty ship. So people came up with the idea of loading white sand from South Africa to stabilize the ship, and at the same time, make a perfect beach in Port Moresby, because most of the coastline was reef, rocky and there was no white sandy beach. Because of the great idea, now we are enjoying White sandy beach brought all the way from South Africa here in Papua New Guinea !!