Papua New Guinea 1982

By 1982 Camel Trophy had attracted interest from a number of other countries and was well on the way to becoming a truly international event. For the third Camel Trophy, two teams from Holland, Germany, Italy and the United States participated.

The location selected was the island of New Guinea, lying to the north of Australia, or more precisely, the eastern half of the island, Papua New Guinea. Covering an area of more than 460,000 square kilometres with a population of 3.5 million people made up of approximately 700 different tribes, this was an ideal Camel Trophy location: vast, sparsely populated, remote, exotic, challenging and tough.    

However it was felt that the new international make-up of the event and the increase in team numbers required a greater element of competition than previous events.  "Special Tasks" were introduced for the first time, albeit in a fairly limited way.

After Range Rover's excellent performance in Sumatra in 1981, the decision was made to use them again for 1982, forming a partnership with Land Rover that was to last nearly twenty years. 

The eight teams tackled a potentially hazardous route along remote colonial trails from the mining settlement of Mount Hagen to Madang on the west coast. Teams were tested day and night by the extreme conditions of climate and terrain, with progress ever impaired by tracks washed away by mud slides, raging rapids, tricky river crossings and localised flooding. Many a night was spent building bridges and repairing roads on this tough expedition.

In what was to become on of the most enduring and iconic moments of Camel Trophy history, the convoy encountered the Asaro Mud Men...

"From what seemed to be every angle of the dense jungle perimeter emerged men with large masks made of clay, pig tusks and dogs’ teeth; their bodies caked in dry mud.  They advanced towards us in an eerie silence.  Not wavering in their approach, they continuously struck themselves with the limbs and leaves of some sort of shrubbery.  It was apparent that this was an organised display of culture, but with no pre-warning of their existence and the fact that there were more of them than us, it was unsettling."

Robert Comstock, Team USA

The winners of the first international Camel Trophy were the Italian pairing of Cesare Geraudo and Giuliano Giongo with Germany 1 as runners-up. At this stage there was no separate award for the Special Tasks.

Statistics

Participating Countries