Jayapura
— — the harbour at the far edge of the country.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of Papua province, on the north coast of New Guinea, a short drive from the border with Papua New Guinea. A working harbour town set on a deep bay, with hills coming straight down to the water. Lake Sentani lies west of the city; the airport sits on its shore. The far edge of Indonesia, on the Pacific side of the world.
Jayapura, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Capital of Indonesia's Papua province, on Yos Sudarso Bay on the north coast of New Guinea, about fifty kilometres west of the border with Papua New Guinea. Around 400,000 people live in the metropolitan area. Founded by Dutch colonial administrators in 1910 as Hollandia, it served as General Douglas MacArthur's South West Pacific Area headquarters in 1944. The current name, given in 1968, means 'city of victory' in Sanskrit. Sentani International Airport sits on the shore of Lake Sentani, thirty-five kilometres west.
Yos Sudarso Bay opens north into the Pacific; the hills behind the city fall directly into deep water, and the harbour has been a working port for more than a century. Lake Sentani, the city's other water, lies west — about a hundred square kilometres, dotted with twenty-odd islands and ringed by stilt-house villages of the Sentani people. Traditional bark paintings from those villages still travel down to the market in town, alongside fish from the bay and sago from the inland forest.
Most international travel routes through Sentani International, a thirty-five-kilometre drive west of the city centre, with daily connections from Jakarta and Makassar. The MacArthur Memorial at Ifar Gunung above the lake holds wartime exhibits and the long view east toward Papua New Guinea. Hamadi beach south of town carries a quiet reputation. Bring cash; ATM coverage is uneven, and access to the Baliem Valley further south depends on small-plane charters out of Sentani that fill quickly around the August Baliem Valley Festival.