Kokoda: A Track Winding Back

I confess I cried during the dawn service at Port Moresby’s Bomana War Cemetery on Anzac Day, 2008. I had spent the previous 12 days walking the 100-kilometre Kokoda Track across Papua New Guinea’s Owen Stanley Range, in the footsteps of the Australian and Japanese soldiers who had fought in that inhospitable terrain in 1942.
I had been anticipating a very hard slog, in appalling conditions, through the jungle and knee-high swamps while battling ailments and illness and being besieged by leeches. I was lucky: I didn’t even get a blister.
In preparation for the trek I had trained hard to improve my overall fitness. I’d run on the trails over Nail Can Hill, scrambled up and down The Staircase, and climbed Mt Feathertop. Ascending and descending a staircase, taking two steps at a time, is also excellent preparation.
You can walk the track in either direction. We walked back from Kokoda village, which we flew into by light plane. Our group of 12 trekkers and three local trek leaders was supported by a dozen or so porters.

Meeting my porter, Phil, after our plane’s three-bounce landing in Kokoda

There is very little in the way of creature comforts to be enjoyed along the track, even if you choose to go with one of the higher-priced trekking outfits such as Adventure Kokoda (www.kokodatreks.com), which specialises in ‘battlefield treks’ that focus on the military history and key battlefield sites, or Peregrine (www.peregrineadventures.com), the operator I went with. Friends of mine had good things to say about the more moderately priced Kokoda Spirit (www.kokodaspirit.com). I paid extra to have a personal porter carry my main pack, leaving me with a day pack weighing about 12 kilos.
The Owen Stanley Range is one of the most primitive places in the world. We walked through villages that comprised a few thatched huts – and little else. Apart from tattered T-shirts, and the occasional iron pipe or rubber hose, there was little to indicate that life for the villagers had changed in tens of thousands of years. Occasionally we were able to buy a few bananas or peanuts, or a can of warm soft drink.
Our route took us through Isurava, where there is a moving monument (four pillars bearing the words ‘courage’, ‘endurance’, ‘mateship’ and ‘sacrifice’), Templeton’s Crossing, Mt Bellamy, a detour to Myola for a day’s rest, back to Efogi (where there is a memorial to the Japanese soldiers who fought on the track), Brigade Hill, Menari, Imita Ridge (where, after climbing to the top, I became quite overwhelmed by emotion) and Goldie River, where we swam and drank beers and prepared ourselves mentally for the ascent to Ower’s Corner the next morning and the end of our trek.
Much of the walking requires a lot of concentration. My porter, Phil, stayed with me the whole way and gave me lots of instructions. I followed some of them.
Apparently, Phil’s mother’s sister paid a witch doctor to place a spell on Phil’s dad to make him fall in love with her. He duly fell for her and left Phil’s mum and their eight children to shack up with his former sister-in-law. That old black magic will do it every time.
Most of the track is very narrow (often single file) and much is under canopy. The swampy caldera through which we waded to Myola was very different from anything we’d seen before. The daily rainfall from around 2 pm really started to churn up the track during the second week and we spent the last four days mainly walking in mud.
Our porters carried all our food, cooking and other equipment, tarps and tools. They also sang for us, which sent shivers up and down my spine. On the last four or five mornings, as more groups of trekkers were converging on Ower’s Corner in time for Anzac Day, a couple of ‘runners’ would set off before dawn to secure us a hut at our next overnight camp. On a couple of nights we missed out and slept under canvas on groundsheets.


A typical river crossing

One day we walked through an area where the sound of cicadas filled the air for about half an hour. It swooped and dived and rolled in and around the trees above us. I felt that I was being visited by the spirits of the Kokoda Track.

DON’T MISS: The Boneman of Kokoda: Kokichi Nishimura, by Charles Happell (Pan Macmillan), for a different view on the Kokoda campaign; swimming in the Goldie River. I DON’T MISS: Salada crackers with canned tuna and beetroot.

A Walk on the Wilder Side

I’m spending Anzac Day this year back in New York City, where I’m running a half marathon in Central Park with my friend Kathy, a fellow member of the Dead Runners Society. My photographer friend Holly and I will be checking out a Cartier-Bresson show at the Museum of Modern Art and a condom exhibition at the Museum of Sex, which is just a short walk from my home for the week, the famous Chelsea Hotel. Quite possibly my room will be where Sex Pistol Sid Vicious allegedly stabbed to death his punk girlfriend Nancy Spungen in 1978.