Indian director Dr Biju (seated on right) on location in the jungle at Varirata National Park during the Papa Buka shoot
and enjoy themselves, and they charge a fee, a very nice place. We would go up and the whole community, they knew us, so we were like friends and family. We still go up there from time to time and check up with them.” Sine’s wife Doriga Mariori also accompanied him through most days of the shoot, and while Sine started being called ‘Papa Buka’ by everyone, his wife was known as Mama Sine. “We would take her to just sit around and when she was tired, we took her back to the Kokoda Trail Motel. During the whole shooting period we got a room for those couples to be housed in there. She was not part of the cast but she was there with the children and grandchildren.” Sine, a father of five and grandfather of eight, loves to tell the story of how he met Doriga as a young man while racing in one of PNG’s iconic
car rallies of the 60s and 70s – the Papuan Safari, run by the Car Club (South Pacific Motor Sports Club). The three-day rally across Central Province’s war- time roads attracted racers from Australia and as far as England to compete against local drivers such as Sine. It was while racing in 1971 that Sine passed through his future wife’s village, and he recalls being so excited when he spotted her that he told his navigator to throw lollies towards her from their car to get her attention. “When I drive past (and saw her) I screamed ‘lole, lole’!” he says, laughing, “and I tell the navigator, ‘Throw the lollies straight to that girl there’. That lole came to me now, that’s how I got her. I married my wife in 1973.” Although Sine was unable to complete Grade 10 (called Form Four at that time) as he was
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VOLUME 43 2025
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