Meth arrives in Australia through many routes, but it's destroying lives on Papua New Guinea's islands near the Torres Strait

Authorities in PNG say the illicit drug trade through the Torres Strait into Australia is a rising concern for these island communities. (ABC News: Tim Swanston)

Cruising along the shared maritime border between Australia and Papua New Guinea in the Torres Strait, police and customs officers get a call.

They’ve just been told a group suspected of trafficking methamphetamine has left the PNG island of Daru and is heading their way.

A tense atmosphere envelops the boat, with the officers keenly scanning the coastline, firearms in hand.

After 20 minutes pass, they realise their mark has likely turned around.

They’ll have to try and find their people of interest on the island.

With soaring demand for illicit drugs and high street value for methamphetamine and cocaine, Australia is a tempting target for transnational crime syndicates.

And Australia’s geography means neighbouring island nations are a waypoint in what’s commonly referred to as the Pacific Drug Highway.

PNG has been caught up in some extraordinary headlines in recent years as traffickers attempt to bring illicit drugs into Australia.

In July 2020, a light plane crashed while trying to take off from a makeshift airstrip north-west of Port Moresby, allegedly carrying more than 540 kilograms of cocaine.

Just last year, Australian Federal Police intercepted another alleged “black flight” attempt where more than 70kg of methamphetamine was flown from an airstrip south of Lae to Queensland.

While it’s not known exactly how illicit drugs make their way into PNG or where they come from, it’s suspected they’re trafficked into the country from South-East Asia or South America.

But one route in particular from PNG to Australia has recently stoked serious concerns in the Torres Strait.

Why the Torres Strait is an attractive route for smugglers

Just a few months ago, Australian and PNG police discovered an alleged plot to move 5kg of methamphetamine through the Torres Strait.

The opportunity is easy to understand — at its closest point, the two countries are only 4 kilometres apart, from PNG’s Sidabadu village to Australia’s Saibai island.

The area is notorious for illegal fishing and people smuggling.

It’s a difficult beat to police. There are effectively six officers with two boats to patrol a large expanse of both ocean and remote villages.

On top of drug activity, they’re keeping an eye on transnational and local criminal activity.

Six people have been arrested for the alleged importation attempt in November — three in the coastal village of Mabaduan, two in the former Western provincial capital of Daru and one person in Port Moresby.

Detective Sergeant Kally Pamuan from the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary Transnational Crimes Unit said the number of recent methamphetamine busts in the region was “very worrying”.

“If there is a spillover effect of meth within Daru Island, we would certainly run into chaos,” he said.

“The locals here are only used to cannabis, and not so much of the hard drugs yet.

“The syndicates, and those people who are actually involved in this thing, they have to look very carefully and see the effects that it will have in the community.”

Daru is one of the very few Torres Strait islands that belongs to PNG.

Traditional border crossing from here and nearby villages to Australia is still quite common.

Many locals have families spread across the Torres Strait, and frequently move between the islands for social and recreational visits as well as fishing.

You don’t have to search far to find locals with stories about smuggling taking place on the island or the coastline.

Many of these stories end in heartache.

Less than a year ago, Alfred Adiba’s adult son Colin boarded a dinghy with his uncle Peter and another man.

“These were two people smuggling drugs from here to Torres Strait Islands or to Australia for guns and for money,” Mr Adiba says.

Days later, Peter called his family to say that the boat had run out of fuel and the three men were drifting out to sea.

They were never found.

“Sometimes when people come and ask me about how your child is, we feel like crying because he’s the child that we loved,” Mr Adiba says, tears in his eyes.

“If I knew that my son was going with them I would have stopped him.

“They look for survival, this is what the drug dealers do.

“Some other people, they pay them to do such dirty work for them.”

For Amanipa Gamia, who was married to Peter, the reasons for his “illegal work” between PNG and Australia were clear.

“I think he wanted to help the family for other reasons like school fees for our children,” she says.

“At this very moment we are not working, we survive on our little markets.”

Dire economic times are making communities vulnerable to the drug trade 

In the seaside villages of Daru, the illegal sea cucumber trade is illustrative of the desperate financial situation faced by many.

As the tide comes in, so too do many dinghies, with men hauling heavy bags out of the boats.

They’ve just spent the night out on the reef, harvesting sea cucumber — also known as beche-de-mer.

The coastal community quickly gets to work, separating the haul and boiling it for sale.

They say they’re going to sell it to Indonesians who have crossed the border to purchase it.

There are restrictions on sea cucumber harvesting in PNG and while locals are permitted to catch and eat it themselves, it’s illegal for them to sell it to Indonesians who cross the border.

Beche-de-mer is hugely popular as a delicacy and medicine in parts of South-East Asia, but with the rising cost of fuel and boat hire, locals are barely breaking even.

“We have no other means and ways to make money,” said Sedu Sam, who told the ABC he’d been imprisoned in Daru for illegal fishing.

These dire economic circumstances and the limited job prospects worry community elders, who fear the illegal activity could escalate from sea cucumbers to methamphetamine.

“They are born fishermen, but these new things like drugs, they get involved because somebody is coming with money to pay for their accommodation or pay for their transportation,” local-level government president Murray Dimai said.

“The young people feel left out, they don’t have enough activities or businesses to involve themselves in. This is where they turn to because people come in with drugs.

“They come with money too, so when they offer money, they go for it. Because at the end of the day, they know they will have something.”

It’s a sentiment that Sergeant Pamuan acknowledges.

“I think they’re basically doing it for their own survival. They know it’s wrong, but they’re still doing it,” he said.

“It gives the law enforcement a very big challenge for us to combat these illegal activities that are happening within our jurisdiction here.”

There are also concerns about the harms of drug use in these remote islands.

Mr Dimai said while he wasn’t directly aware of people in his community using methamphetamine, he’d heard about it from his counterparts in the Torres Strait.

This is a common sentiment — many feel that while illicit drugs aren’t a major problem now, if meth use did take off it could have disastrous consequences for communities with limited access to health facilities and support.

Health providers in Australia are also concerned about the harms associated with methamphetamine use, noting that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in remote areas are at greater risk than non-Indigenous people.

Mr Dimai is hopeful that the government will put greater investment into the fisheries industry, to allow locals to better store and export their catch, encouraging legitimate incomes.

He’s also pushing for better communication networks in remote parts of the coast, to help report drug trafficking.

“That borderland is my people, day and night they’re witnessing movements of people,” he said.

“With better communication equipment it will help. We see it but we cannot report it.”