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By Bob Connolly

MELBOURNE, Australia (Radio Australia, Sept. 14, 2016) – The last time filmmaker Bob Connolly was in the Papua New Guinea Highlands, he was caught up in one of the bloodiest tribal wars in the region's history. That was 25 years ago. Now, Connolly has returned to the Highlands to catch up with the key characters from his award-winning trilogy of documentaries centred on the Leahy family, made with his late partner Robin Anderson in the 1980s and 90s.

My house is full of souvenirs from our years in the PNG Highlands, among them arrow-pitted shields, gold lipped pearlshells from a moka ceremony and a black palm bow I no longer have the strength to draw back.

But the souvenir that means most to me has sadly disappeared, lost a decade ago when my attic became an upstairs bedroom for my two daughters.

It was a nondescript piece of cane, twisted in the shape of a figure eight, about the size of a...

The U.S. military wants to significantly beef up its presence in the Western Pacific as it pivots to the Asia-Pacific and with an eye on aggressive actions by China and North Korea. Plans include moving about 5,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guan and building up training capacity on two small islands -- Tinian and Pagan -- near Saipan. Pacific Outpost - a multi-part, multimedia series that will take you along as our journalists talk with residents, military officials, environmental activists and others about what likely will be big changes in an isolated region.

Cook Islanders had lost the art of voyaging until the 1990s with the building of Te Au o Tonga under the leadership of Sir Thomas Davis. Inspired by the coming of the vaka Hokule’a to Rarotonga for the 6th Pacific Arts Festival, Cook Islanders committed to learning the lost art of non-instrument navigation and traditional voyaging. Now older generation of crew members is ready to train the younger generation. Are they ready?

Ahead of the launch of her debut novel The Earth Cries Out, author Bonnie Etherington talks with Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Kendall Hutt about the grief and loss intertwined with growing up in West Papua, against a backdrop of the wider political and humanitarian issues of the controversial Indonesian-ruled region.