Liz Cosson - Trying to find a way back

Transcript

I always had a sense that they were aware of the fact that their island paradise had been destroyed and they wanted to find their way into the world, which, in their mind was separate to the Government of PNG. And they blamed a lot of the past and history on the way that their island had been damaged.

I always felt that they wanted to be part of a solution though, even in the remote communities when we fly in and we'd land on the fields and we'd go to our team site, we'd always be welcomed and the local communities would just want to come and talk, you know.

They're just wonderful people who were trying to find their way back into what they loved about their island paradise of Bougainville because it is such a magnificent Island and it has so much richness. They wouldn't have gone into Arawa and seen the damage potentially but they knew it existed and they knew of the dangers still, where, as I mentioned, the no-fly zones over the mines, they were certainly aware of that.