PHOTOGRAPHYALAMY, GETTY IMAGES“Every now and then I would stop and turn around and
flash on the light to encourage them. They saw nothing
but its light that would help them, but it gave them heart.
They were led by a man with a light!
“After two hours the torch gave out. The man who had
been shot in the chest said: ‘I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll wait
till daylight.’ I gave him a nip out of my brandy flask and he
was asleep, lying in the arsenic weed, before I had straightened
up from bending over him. I started to cry. The tears rolled
down my face, burning. Now there was no light. The line fell
away, disintegrated. I was alone.”
As he finished reading that last line, Jason dimmed the lantern
and we sat in darkness for a moment. With only the dull roar of
the nearby creek rushing over rocks as our score, the image of
Australian soldiers, barely out of their teens, lying scared and
wounded in the pitch-black night, flooded our imaginations.
To stand at the Isurava Memorial and look down into the
valley back towards Kokoda is one of travel’s great experiences.
Standing on the carefully manicured lawns, amid four granite
pillars with the words ‘Courage’, ‘Endurance’, ‘Mateship’ and
‘Sacrifice’ etched into them, stunned by the majesty of the
scenery and moved by the young lives lost here in battle.
To take part in a memorial service atop Brigade Hill —
where attempts by Australian soldiers to deflect the advancing
Japanese have since been described as an ‘unmitigated calamity’
— is to pause and wonder at what it must feel like to know
pure fear or perform an act of true heroism.
FROM TOP The
track begins at Owers’
Corner; Japanese
war relics remain
above Eora Creek; the
Isurava Memorial is
a place for reflection;
trekkers pass through
the Myola Basin.And then there’s the scenery. The
views are spectacular: dramatic peaks,
lush tropical jungle and stretches of quiet
waterways shaded by enormous bird’s
nest ferns. The Myola Basin — a vast,
dry lake bed in the heart of the Owen
Stanley Range — appears suddenly out
of place, making you feel as if you’ve
stumbled onto an African savannah.
But it’s the history of the place that
will stay with you. On the outskirts of Port
Moresby, on the second-last day of our
trip, we stopped at Bomana, one of the
largest war cemeteries in the Pacific and
the final resting place of 3779 soldiers.
Walking silently among the white
marble tombstones and reading the
names, ages and dedications carved into
them was a sobering experience.
One was inscribed with a reminder
of the indiscriminate carnage of war:
“Private H.E. Ball, 31 — Youth and ambition
lie buried. Life’s hopes unfulfilled.”GETTING THERE TO BOOK FLIGHTS TO PAPUA
NEW GUINEA VISIT WWW.VIRGINAUSTRALIA.
COM OR CALL 13 6 7 8 9 (IN AUSTRALIA).