Kokoda: Walking in the footsteps of heroes
IN the build-up to the centenary of armistice, five SA mates journeyed to the site of one of Australia’s most significant battles of the past 100 years — the Kokoda Track. This is their diary of an extraordinary week.
IN the build-up to the centenary of armistice, five SA mates journeyed to the site of one of Australia’s most significant battles of the past 100 years — the Kokoda Track. This is their diary of an extraordinary week.
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DAY 1
We were only about 10 minutes in when the Buna Boys broke out into song.
It was the dusty, steep, downhill track from Ower’s Corner, and our group of 10 fresh trekkers was nervously concentrating on every step.
But then the melodic voices of our porters’ harmony interrupted the natural noise of the jungle. It was a thing of beauty.
We were on the Kokoda Track — the same ground on which another generation of young Australians had trekked more than three quarters of a century ago.
They were young men from across the nation, many of them ill-prepared for both the condition of the track and the horrors of war which they would encounter.
Among those World War II soldiers was my grandfather, Private Stirling Ashenden, of the South Australian 2/27th Battalion. I was last here in 2011, for work, and had always vowed to come back and do the track with mates.
So I had roped in four good friends and we had been training, with various degrees of tenacity and dedication, for the best part of 12 months.
We transferred our gear from suitcases to backpacks in a hotel carpark in Port Moresby. It was here that we met our porters, the friendly, gentle carriers who would watch us every step of the rugged 96km trail which would take us eight days to traverse.
By the end of the trek, we would have walked more than 180,000 steps — according to one trekker’s trusty Garmin — ranging from 9000 steps on the final day up to 27,000 steps on a massive fifth day.
We had left Cairns at 6.30am that first morning and by the time we started walking, it was after lunch. The first few hours on the Kokoda Track, to our campsite at Good Water, were often steep, usually dusty and mostly downhill. We used sticks to help keep us upright.
Midway to camp we removed our boots and waded through the Goldie River before continuing along, in single file, on the narrow path which had been carved out of the jungle centuries ago.
It had been used mainly as a postal route by the locals before the Japanese landed on the northern beaches of what was then called Australian New Guinea in late July, 1942.
The Japanese plan was to march over the track and take Port Moresby. They had given themselves three weeks. But the resilience of the Australian fighting retreat which followed led to a six-month campaign which ultimately ended in Japanese defeat.
At that time, the country was under Australian administration, so the battle which followed was the first and only major military fracas carried out on Australian soil.
DAY 2
We were up just before 5am, and walking before 7am, when we made our way to the top of Imita Ridge. This was where the Australian soldiers made their last stand in September, 1942. It had been a solid slug up to the top of the ridge. Tree roots wove a treacherous, ankle-threatening and seemingly never-ending web to form the base of the track, making every step a potential hazard. It was hard work, and I was thankful a solid training block of long weekend walks in the Adelaide Hills and daily core-strengthening exercises seemed to be holding me in good stead. But some struggled, and we paused often to catch our breath.
After stopping at the top, we walked down to Ua-Ule Creek, and it was boots off and sandals on to pass through 22 creek crossings. Initially it was refreshing to feel the cool water on our feet, but after two hours of walking wearing sandals, I longed for the solid support of hiking boots.
And then it was up. Up to the top of Ioribaiwa Village — our campsite for the night. It was our biggest hill climb so far but slowly, steadily, we made our way to the top. “Rule number one — don’t look up,” the Buna Boys often called out.
Rule number two, they told us, is to concentrate. It’s an important rule and we evaluated every gnarly tree root and slippery rock before taking our next step.
DAY 3
She got through it stoically.
We were on the top of Ioribaiwa Ridge and had taken a sidetrack to see, for the first time this trek, physical signs of conflict between the Australians and Japanese.
We had taken a path not often used, little more than a goat track, and had to push through waist-high grass to see our first Australian fox hole of the trip, then a few Japanese trenches.
We stopped at a small clearing facing north and one of the trekkers read a poem written by an Aussie field ambulance officer after he had uncovered yet another body during the Australian advance in September, 1942.
The poem, called WX-Unknown, was penned by Sapper Bert Beros and pondered the tale of this unidentified West Australian soldier, and his heartbroken mother back home.
A lump rose in the back of my throat as she read.
We buried him there on a mountain spur,
Where the trees are draped with moss,
We thought of the mother, no news for her,
Of that irreplaceable loss.
Just a boy he looked with his snowy hair,
So we laid him in the clay,
The padre’s voice was loud and clear,
No others had words to say …
She completed her task brilliantly, before we stood for a minute’s silence.
We had walked about five hours from that morning’s campsite at Ioribaiwa — up, down, then up again.
It was our toughest and longest day so far and tested the resilience of a couple of trekkers, who, at some breaks, were flat on their backs, sucking in oxygen to fuel the next surge upwards.
Eventually, about 4pm, we lobbed at our campsite, New Nauro. All the way, the Buna Boys raised our spirits with their constant singing and upbeat encouragement.
They sang and played the ukulele as they walked. Most tunes were in their own tongue and most were love stories, but sometimes they broke out in a verse or two of popular Western songs.
At New Nauro, a tiny Seventh Day Adventist village, huts clung precariously on to the mountain to form our camp for the night, before the village proper opened to a dusty town centre, where a tiny church stood in pride of place.
Like all of the villages along the track, there was no power, no lighting, no flushing toilets and the only running water came from a couple of outside taps gravity-fed from mountain streams. The locals were subsistence farmers, living in small, one-room houses, constructed from the trees, vines and leaves of the jungle.
Unlike a couple of the larger villages which boasted mountaintop airstrips, there was none here. The Kokoda Track was the only way in and out so anything the villagers needed — which could not be grown or hunted — had to be carried in on foot.
It was a basic and remote lifestyle, but the locals seemed to live rich lives, surrounded by their families, wanting for little. The concepts of office jobs, paying off debt, traffic and commuting were as far removed from their everyday reality as jungle streams, mountaintop sunsets and towering trees were from ours.
DAY 4
His name was Syl and he was walking this section of the Kokoda Track in thongs.
Well, at least they used to be thongs. They were more like half-thongs now. Most of the front of each thong remained intact but they ran out of rubber just over halfway.
So there was nothing between Syl’s heels and the rough, root-covered path which made up the Kokoda Track.
This meant he was walking in little more than bare feet on the dusty, uneven and narrow track — usually not even a foot wide — and all the while he was carrying a pack weighing about 20kg, most of which was my gear. I’d tried to pack as lightly as possible, and would wear the same shorts and shirt for the duration of the trek. Sure, I knew I’d stink, but everyone else was in the same boat.
Syl was my personal porter and guardian, guiding my every step. He was 30 years old and, like all the Buna Boys, gentle, strong, softly spoken and calm. When we were going up a tough section of track, Syl was always one step behind. When the track headed down and was slippery or steep, he moved to my front.
We had left Nauro about 7am and made our way down to the pebbly beach which formed the southern bank of Brown River, where the Diggers once bathed and refreshed.
We crossed the river on a bridge of fallen tree-trunks. Part of the bridge gave way under one of the trekkers, but he escaped with no injuries apart from a few grazes and a slightly bruised ego.
From there we were on the flat, and enjoyed an hour or so of comfortable hiking under jungle canopy through a large swamp. And then we hit The Wall.
Literally.
The Wall is an infamous part of the track which rises almost vertically towards yet another peak. We’d been bracing ourselves for it for days but, in reality, it was only the first 50m which were steeper than anything else we had encountered — with some vertical steps of nearly a metre, but then it was back to the slow, steady slog of another hour-long hill climb.
We reached Menari, our campsite, by 1pm and ate lunch watching the locals and Buna Boys enjoy a spirited but friendly game of volleyball, thanks to the generosity of one of the trekkers who had brought along a net and ball from Adelaide for this purpose.
Syl, a thoughtful young man who used words economically, kept a low profile. He was two years into an IT degree at Popondetta, income from trekking paying for school fees and internet access. His dream was to earn a job in IT in Port Moresby or Lae.
He had walked the Kokoda Track “many, many times”, sometimes guiding Aussie clients like us, sometimes purely to get himself from Buna to Moresby.
I was a bit grumpy, because my boots had started to come apart at the sole, and I’d needed to use tape to keep them together. They were new, and didn’t come cheap, so I cursed the manufacturer and retailer.
But then I reminded myself that not everyone needed expensive footwear to conquer the track — some could do part of it in a half-broken pair of thongs.
DAY 5
Two words. That’s how many I managed before the tears started welling and I lost the ability to speak.
We were at Brigade Hill and I had known I was going to struggle here since this trip was only in its embryonic planning stages.
I had broken down when I was here seven years ago — cried like a baby — and it was inevitable the tears would flow again. This time they started earlier, in the final stages of the long walk to the top, four hours after our 4.40am start.
Last time I was here there were 62 sticks poking from the ground, each adorned with a red poppy on top, and each representing one Australian soldier who lost their life here in September, 1942.
There were a few less sticks this time, perhaps falling victim to the passage of time, but the symbolism was just as powerful.
My grandfather was one of those soldiers who had walked here 76 years ago and the thought of walking on the same battlefield was overwhelming.
I was tasked with delivering a reading to our trekking group. It was a reading from a diary of a member of the 2/27th. He would have been one of my grandfather’s mates.
The reading told the tale of the 2/27th becoming lost behind enemy lines and spending two weeks scrambling up and down virgin jungle, carrying the injured, and with no food.
It started with a date: “September 9.”
That was as far as I got before my emotions got the better me. A couple of minutes later I finally got it together and read on before passing over to the next reader.
In a piece of impossibly wonderful synchronicity, that next reader was the great-niece of the Digger who had written the diary, Captain Henry Katekar. She did a much better job of keeping her emotions in check. At least she got to the last couple of sentences before her voice started to waver.
We heard another couple of readings about the turmoil which took place here, then the Ode to Remembrance, then the Last Post, then the Buna Boys sang.
By this time, many of us were crying, and then a couple of trekkers, one with a ukulele, sang an alternate version of Eric Bogle’s And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda.
We broke ranks, and each had a moment to ourselves, before embracing to close a remarkable moment.
A late breakfast followed, and then it was onwards, north from Brigade Hill to Efogi, Efogi 2 and finally Naduri.
It was the hardest day of the trek and by the time we lobbed at camp it was after 5pm and we had been on the track for more than 12 hours. I was emotionally and physically drained but the simple pleasure of dangling my feet off the balcony of our camping quarters was pure joy.
DAY 6
There’s mud, but not enough to make it too uncomfortable.
We were now walking through an area which was notorious for wet weather and mud. It was the mud which made a soldier’s life a living hell back in 1942.
They loathed this part of the track, and when I was here last it was similarly boggy. I remember sloshing through mud 20cm deep, in pouring rain.
But today we were blessed with fine weather — like the rest of our trip — and the good fortune to be walking after an unseasonably dry three months. There were, inexplicably, some muddy and slippery sections, and some almost hairy moments, but the porters assured us that the track was much drier and easier to negotiate than normal.
I was happy with that. It was still a 10-hour hike, I had picked up a head cold yesterday, and was nursing a minor belly complaint after eating a local nut during an early-morning rest.
Steadily we made our way from Naduri, first east and then north before finally arriving at tonight’s camp at Templetons.
DAY 7
If there’s a more spectacular memorial on the planet, then I’d sure like to see it.
We were at Isurava, the site of the second major Australian resilience back in 1942. We paused and sat on the concrete steps, looking over the stunning memorial which overlooked the northern edge of the Owen Stanley Range.
In front of us were four granite pillars, each inscribed with a single word which typified the spirit of the Australian Digger. Courage. Endurance. Mateship. Sacrifice.
We sat in silence for minutes, staring past the pillars, over the edge of the ranges and on to the plains of Kokoda.
The silence was broken only by the sounds of a nearby river, wind rustling through the trees, jungle birds … and the sobbing of one grown man.
This time it wasn’t me, but a mate was overwhelmed with the emotion of reaching this memorial, the majesty of the view and the history of what took place here. It was here that private Bruce Kingsbury, 24, won the first and only Victoria Cross to be awarded on Australian soil, firing his Bren gun from the hip and clearing a path through the enemy for his platoon, until he was shot dead by a sniper hiding in the woods.
It had been another long day on the track as we wound our way from Templeton’s Crossing to Eora Creek, to a munitions dump and then up to Alola and Isurava.
By the time we lobbed in Isurava, the knees and ankles of some of the group were starting to flare after three days of trekking mostly downhill, but the sight of the memorial made us quickly forget our aches and pains — words of complaint were rendered worthless in the midst of such majesty.
DAY 8
It’s all but over. We’ve stopped to camp at Hoi, the last mountain village on the track.
Tomorrow, it’s just a two-hour meander on the flat to reach Kokoda, and then we’ll jump in the back of a truck to start our journey home.
As had become custom, we were awake before dawn, but today we wouldn’t start walking until nearly 8am. First, there was a dawn service to get through at Isurava.
We gathered around a rock which Kingsbury had used for cover. We stood silent as his tale was read out and then listened to a poem written by fellow Digger Alan Avery, after his best mate had been shot. It started:
“What do you say to a dying man?
“Do you call him Bob or Digger or Mate? …”
Our silence was thick with emotion. We moved up from Kingsbury’s Rock to the memorial where the battle-weary 39th Battalion was relieved by the 2/14th and 2/16th Battalions of the AIF.
“Where do you want us to go, Cobber?” they had asked. “How are you mate?” “Where are the bastards?”
The Buna Boys joined us in the darkness and we formed a semi-circle around the memorial. The Ode of Remembrance was followed by the Last Post and a minute’s silence. We sang our national anthem, the Buna Boys sang theirs.
And then it was down. Down to Isurava Village, then Deniki and finally to Hoi. It was only a six-hour walk and spirits were high as we ended our last full day walking.
It’s been an amazing eight days. Eight days of reflection — both internally and on the deeds of those who had come before us all those years ago.
Eight days of emotion — of soaring highs of achievement and wonder, tempered with frequent tears as we pondered the massive waste of life.
Eight days of aches and pains — of one foot in front of another, one hill at a time and intense concentration on the heels of whoever you were following.
Eight days of basic living — of wearing the same clothes day after day, of stinking long-drop toilets, of sleeping on the floor under mosquito nets, of no power and no running water.
Eight days of natural wonder — of giant pandanus trees, moss forests, choko fields which line entire mountainsides, stunning waterfalls and breathtaking vistas. Of villages clinging to the edge of hills, and giant cedar trees metres wide and hundreds of years old.
It had been eight days of cultural awakening — of making new friends with our softly-spoken, gentle and strong porters, of being dazzled by their incredible singing and humbled by their companionship, help and care.
And it had been eight days of mateship — of that great Australian tradition which stretches back to the days when my grandfather and his mates were on this same track.
Eight days with a bunch of blokes from all different walks of life, discovering sides of each other we had previously not known existed, and bonding through shared experience.
Eight days in which our party of five mates, away from partners and children, enhanced our friendships to a new, deeper level we will no doubt relish for the rest of our days.
Eight days none of us will ever forget.