Father-son duo trek to Kokoda to place family mementos on graves of fallen WW2 diggers

FATHER and son team Robert and Daniel Harris will carry with them some precious cargo when they tackle the Kokoda Track next month.

20/03/15. Robert and his son Daniel Harris are doing Kokoda to honour the Anzacs. Pic. Noelle Bobrige

FATHER and son team Robert and Daniel Harris will carry with them some precious cargo when they tackle the Kokoda Track next month.

The Greenwith pair are offering to take family mementos to place on gravesites of fallen soldiers buried at the Bomana War Cemetery in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.

The cemetery holds 3069 known and 237 unknown Australians, along with 443 Allied soldiers.

“We can take whatever they want to give us – a poppy, a rose, a memento, whatever – and we’ll take it and put it next to the headstone and take a photograph,” Robert, 55, of Greenwith, says.

Robert says he and his son will then email or post the photograph to families so they could hold onto it as a keepsake.

“We’d like to make someone’s day by doing it,” he says.

Robert says all they need is a first and last name of a family’s descendant to locate their grave.

Daniel, 31, of Grange, says the idea came about after Anzac Day last year.

“Dad came to my house one afternoon, all very serious like, and I thought he was in a bit of trouble and then he said he wanted to do this Kokoda trip,” Daniel says.

“He wanted to do something we would always remember.”

Daniel says he and his father hope to give others who may not be able to visit their relatives at Bomana War Cemetery a chance to do something special for them.

“We’ve always been interested in the forces and the army and paying our respects to people who fought for us in the past,” he says.

While the Harris’ did not have any direct family connection to anyone who fought at Kokoda, they wanted to pay their respects to those who had.

“In Bomana War Cemetery along, at the end of the Kokoda Track, there are the graves of 237 unknown Aussie diggers,” he said.

“Who will remember them?”

Robert and Daniel will be walking the Kokoda Track from April 19 to 28.

Anyone who wishes to have a memento placed on a digger’s grave at Bomana War Cemetery can contact Robert and Daniel by emailing [e-mail].