Martin's come a long way since leaving remote PNG village
Published on 10 September, 2012
To walk a mile in Martin Muekia's shoes you'd really have to walk for three hours.
That's how long it used to take Martin to walk from his boyhood village to his nearest primary school on the coast of Madang Province, in Papua New Guinea. It actually took even longer - up to five hours - to reach the nearest bus-stop.
Martin Muekia relaxes in the campus library towards the end of his MBA study
Martin has certainly come a long way since those days as he is completing his MBA majoring in HRM at CQUniversity in Rockhampton. It's a great achievement for someone from a family of subsistence farmers in a particularly remote part of PNG.
After attending boarding school to matriculate, Martin studied IT at PNG's University of Technology in Lae before securing employment in a range of IT jobs, in industries including banking and energy.
Based mainly in Port Moresby, Martin is now married with six children.
He earned an AusAID scholarship to study at CQUniversity but needed to take an additional loan and cash in his superannuation so his family could eventually join him in Australia during the second-half of his stay.
The proud family members will gather to witness Martin's participation in a Going Home ceremony for departing international students, scheduled for October 2 on Rockhampton Campus.