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Newspapers, journals, official reports, published books, and oral accounts are examined for references to frost and drought in Papua New Guinea from 1982 to the 1880s and a record of probable events is established. Climatological and documentary sources from Indonesia are then examined as a proxy record of frost and drought in PNG and the record is taken back to the 1870s. The association between the quantitative and qualitative records of frost and drought in PNG is examined alongside a composite record of the SO/ENSO phenomena. Frost occurs under a range of general meteorological conditions, but in those ENSO events that have a major west-Pacific impact drought is normal, and wide areas are exposed to the risk of repeated frost. However, one of the worst single'famine'events uncovered in the highland record did not arise from frost, but from other causes.