Emeritus Professor Russell Blong was the former Director of Risk Frontiers (Natural Hazards Research Centre) and a Professorial Fellow in the Division of Environmental & Life Sciences at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He holds Masters degrees in Geography (Auckland) and Engineering Science (UNSW) and a PhD in Geomorphology (Sydney). Professor Blong has researched a wide range of natural hazards and their consequences but his passions include earthquake, volcanic and landslide hazards in Australia and the South Pacific.
The “time of darkness” project was undertaken from 1970 to 1982 in collaboration with Emeritus Professor Jack Golson from the Australian National University. The aim of the project was to collect oral histories from people in Papua New Guinea about the “time of darkness”. The “time of darkness” legends were collected to document a cataclysmic volcanic eruption which occurred in Papua New Guinea more than 300 years ago. The initial archaeological investigation was at an archaeological site in the Western Highlands Province of PNG where numerous thin layers of inorganic sediments were identified in Kuk swamp. Studies of the mineralogy and stratigraphy of thin layers revealed that many of them were volcanic ash. The uppermost tephra was the product of a volcanic eruption of considerable magnitude.

The questionnaires were conducted by linguists, missionaries, anthropologists and others who worked in various parts of Papua New Guinea during the 1970s. A common theme of the 56 versions of the legend collected is a fall of material from the sky. Because most of the versions of the legend stem from the fall of Tibito Tephra, a volcanic ash identifiable on the ground and with ascertainable effects, Blong compares the leged with reality.
The legends were collated and edited into a journal article, “Time of darkness legends from Papua New Guinea”, collated and edited by Russell J. Blong, Oral History, Vol.VII, No.10, 1979 and were later published in the book The time of darkness : local legends and volcanic reality in Papua New Guinea, by R.J. Blong, Canberra, Australian National University, 1982.
The significance of the time of darkness legends extends far beyond their importance as a collection of stories. They are a coherent group of legends about one event, having originated with one of the great volcanic eruptions of the last millennium, an eruption that was not witnessed by European man.

Original material relating to the oral histories collected for the Time of Darkness project in Papua New Guinea throughout the 1970s.
• “Time of darkness legends from Papua New Guinea”, collated and edited by Russell J. Blong, Oral History, Vol.VII, No.10, 1979.
• Questionnaire returns, correspondence and reports.

See Finding aids for details.