What happens
Captain John Moresby of HMS Basilisk sails into the waters off New Guinea in the 1870s and charts its eastern coast, naming Port Moresby after his father. Later, an Australian prospector named Shark Eye Park searches the rugged interior for gold, and a banker named Cecil Levine funds airfields that carry dredges and supplies over the mountains. The program then turns to the island's value in the Second World War, as Japanese advances over the Owen Stanley Range meet Australian and Allied forces in the jungle. The Pacific Story, a National Broadcasting Company series, first aired on March 26, 1944, and this episode is narrated by Gain Whitman.
New Guinea, the Pacific: its coasts, mountains, jungles and goldfields, from the 19th century through the Second World War
Characters: Captain John Moresby, Mr. Marillion, Shark Eye Park, Cecil Levine, Mr. Wilson, Dr. Honey
Listen for: The account of Moresby's voyage and the naming of Port Moresby, and the description of the Japanese campaign across the Owen Stanley Range toward Port Moresby
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.