By Lindsay Murdoch on the Kokoda Trail
VILLAGERS yesterday felled a tree across Papua New Guinea's historic Kokoda Trail, where Australian soldiers fought Japanese troops in 1942, and declared trekkers unwelcome.
"The track is closed," said a village spokesman, Barney Jack.
"From today no trekkers will pass by here," he said.
"If people come here and trespass on our land we will use force to stop them."
Mr Jack said he represented 1000 villagers who are demanding that the PNG Government allow the Australian company Frontier Resources to dig up 600 metres of the trail to mine a $US6 billion ($6.7 billion) copper and gold deposit.
The villagers have been offered a 5 per cent stake in the mine that could reap them more than $US100 million over the proposed 10-year life of the mine.
But the Australian Government is pressuring the PNG Government not to allow the trail to be disturbed.
In recent years walking the trail has become a pilgrimage for thousands of Australians. Its closure will infuriate diggers, who regard it as a sacred landmark in Australian military history where more than 600 Australians were killed while repelling the Japanese advance towards Australia.
PNG officials expect that up to 6000 trekkers, most of them Australians, will want to travel to PNG after the 2008 trekking season opens early next month.
The blockade has been set up near Naoro village, a cluster of 40 hilltop huts 55 kilometres north-east of the PNG capital, Port Moresby, where 11 clan groups have decided to take a stand.
Henry Elijah, 23, felled the tree in what Mr Jack said was a symbolic event marking the first time that Australians had not been welcome along the trail.
Villagers waved placards carrying the messages "What has Australia done for fuzzy wuzzies in 65 years?" and "Rudd wants fuzzy wuzzies to live in perpetual poverty".
Mr Jack said the last thing the villagers wanted was to stop seeing Australian trekkers, who had for years been welcomed with plates of food and showered with petals. "We have closed the track because we want to the Australian Government to listen to us."
He said the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who walked the trail to mark Anzac Day in 2006, must understand how hard life was in the villages along the trail, where men earned $20 a day working as porters for trekkers.
When in Opposition last year, Mr Rudd said the mine proposal "stinks, absolutely stinks".
He said the trail should be preserved to honour the Australians who fought there.
The mine plan is expected to be high on Mr Rudd 's agenda when he visits PNG next month.
The managing director of Frontier Resources, Peter McNeil, said the trail was privately owned and in a sovereign country, while Greg Anderson, of the PNG Chamber of Mines and Petroleum, said reorientating the trail about a kilometre to the west "will not detract from its integrity or historical significance".