080 VIRGIN AUSTRALIA MAY 2017
HERE COMES A point on the
Kokoda Track when you feel
broken. Your legs are shaking
and you cannot see for the sweat
stinging your eyes. You dare not
look up, for fear the sight of the
mountain that’s still left to climb
will snap you in half completely.
It comes about the same day
you’re in the grip of a stomach
bug, when the mud underfoot
is sticky and the tree roots you
are clambering over are extra
slippery. Then you realise you
are as far from anywhere as it’s possible to be — too far to walk
back, too diicult to go on. Every muscle in your body is screaming
for relief and you’ve had days of exposure to mosquitoes.
And then it hits you. You’re here for just over a week, while
the soldiers of WWII endured months. Your passage is facilitated
by obliging locals who carry your bag and set up your tent at
the end of each day; theirs was thwarted at every crest or river
crossing by an Imperial Japanese Army bent on destroying
them. Your journey might be tough, but at least you’re not taking
every step wondering if it is being monitored.
The reasons people take on the Kokoda Track are as numerous
as the muddy bogs they will encounter here. Some come for the
physical challenge, others have deeply personal motivations
(our trek alone comprised of an investment banker on a bonding
trip with his two teenage children, a Darwin mother on a weight
loss mission and a woman from Murray Bridge carrying the
ashes of her dad who had fought here).
Whatever the reason, no visit to Kokoda takes place without
the spectre of the war campaign waged here by Australians
against the Japanese in 1942. It hangs over your every step
and gives every inch of the track’s inhospitable terrain a heavy
sense of history. How a small, under-trained and ill-equipped
band of Aussie Militia troops managed to face down — and
eventually push back — the full might of advancing Japanese
forces is the stuf of military legend. If Gallipoli was where
Australia proved how tough we were as a young nation, Kokoda
is the place we proved we were unbreakable.On our 10-day, 96-kilometre trek over
the mountainous terrain, we would often
divert of the track to visit an important
battle site and learn how a ragtag bunch
of diggers distinguished themselves in the
face of staggering odds on a routine basis.
At regular intervals we’d also pause
at overgrown spots of jungle, where rusty
Japanese helmets, grenades or mortars lay
in the undergrowth. At times it’s hard to
reconcile how this simple dirt track — so
overgrown in parts it seemed almost not to
exist — could have assumed such massive
importance in our national psyche.
And then we would sit at dinner and
listen as our guide, Jason, read excerpts
from military history books, recalling acts
of selfless bravery and displays of courage
in whose presence we were humbled.
One night, at Eora Creek, we listened
as he read the following account, written
by Australian war correspondent Osmar
White, in his book Green Armour:
“The strongest, the least seriously hurt,
overtook the weak, the more seriously
hurt. At the tail of every string, men would
drop of and lie face down in the mud.
Then the next string would come along.
The leaders would help those who had
collapsed into the bushes.
“Some died there. Some recovered
a little strength and moved on at the tail
end of another string. There were piles
of forest refuse that were host to the
same phosphorescent fungus I had seen
near Wau. Sometimes a man would find
a resting place on one of them. One could
see the black shape of his body against
the difuse luminescence. He lay as upon
a pyre of heatless embers.
“Sometimes a voice, weary and quiet,
would come out of the thicket: ‘Dig, I say,
dig. Are you going to Eora? Tell them to
send a light, digger...’ That was their sole
complaint — that in the pitch darkness,
there was no light to guide them.
“A time came when I could pass them
no longer. I had hoarded a worn-out
torch against direct emergency. I flashed
the light sparingly — only when the trail
petered out in a clay scarp, or when there
was a log crossing. A line of wounded men,
100 yards long, formed up behind me.
“The man who walked at my back, his
hand on my shoulder, had been shot twice
in the chest. Behind him was a man with
shrapnel in his forearm and thigh.OPPOSITE PAGE
Local porters will
help trekkers over
the Kokoda Track’s
dificult terrain.
PREVIOUS
PAGE The trail
passes through
thick jungle, such
as on this stretch
between Isurava
and Hoi.