Hi Marc,
The photo you have was taken by Australian photographer George Silk on Christams Day 1942 of Private George "Dick" Whittington of the 2/10th Battalion being gently helped along a track near Buna by Rapheal Oimari, a Papuan native guide. The Diggers on the Kokoda Track called these magnificent blokes the "fuzzy wuzzy angels" in reference to their amazing curly mops of hair and the fact that they would risk their lives to help carry wounded soldiers back from the frontline to receive medical treatment. Many an Australian soldier owed his life to these brave fellas. Sadly, Whittington survived his wounds only to die of scrub typhus in a hospital in Port Moresby two months later
Apart from the curly hair, the other prominent feature of the typical Papuan face is his broad, flat nose and flared nostrils. I'd be careful using a Hornet head- they are very European looking heads. Even if you started with an African Amercian head, you'd still need to make some minor changes to capture the Papuan look.
It's worth noting that many of the tribes in the central highlands of New Guinea had first contact with white men only in the 1920's, and many tribes still practiced canabalism of their enemies and lived a traditional hunter gatherer lifestle that was unchanged since the Stone Age. Even by WW2, most Papuans had had very little contact with Europeans and walked around naked, with the exception of a loincloth .
My Dad was posted to New Guinea in 1973-74 and I spent most of the year hunting for frogs and butterflies in the jungle. I still remember seeing naked Papuan men and women walking through the main street of Port Moresby carrying their spears, covered in ceremonial paint, wearing palm leaf hats and carrying dead animals they'd hunted in the jungle over their shoulders.
If you're looking for good reference material you can't go past "Kokoda Frontline" by Damien Parer. It's a short film documentary shot by Parer on the Kokoda Track and features incredible scenes of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels carrying wounded diggers over treacherous mountain tracks to safety.
For those of you who are film and trivia buffs, "Kokoda Frontline" won the Academy Award in 1943, Australia's first. Sadly Damien Parer was killed in action several months later while filming a landing of US Marines somewhere in the Pacific.
