Adventure Kokoda Blog

Seventy years after the war in the Pacific the Kokoda Trail has become a gateway for a wartime tourism industry in Papua New Guinea.

Over the past decade 30,000 Australians from all walks of life have taken up the challenge of trekking across the arduous trail that connects remote mountain villages between the north and south coast of the island nation.  Their reasons for trekking are varied. Most have an interest in the wartime history of the Kokoda campaign, some want to experience the rawness of village cultures and the pristine jungle environment while others do it simply ‘because it’s there’!

Whatever the reason the journey dispels many of the myths of travel to Papua New Guinea and opens eyes to opportunities for adventure travel within the land of the last adventure.  Over the years various writers have tried to caption the essence of the ‘PNG experience’. It has been referred to as the ‘land of a thousand cultures’ with a ‘Parliament  of a thousand tribes’. Others refer to it as the ‘land of the unexpected’. (more…)

Lynette Silver is Australia’s most authoritive historian on the Sandakan Death March.  She is the author of the acclaimed book ‘Sandakan – a conspiracy of silence’ and numerous papers on the Death March.  Her investigative research exposed two of the most outrageous imposters in recent years, Rex Crane and Marcel Caux.

She is now investigating claims made by Wayne Wetherall, owner of Kokoda Spirit and Sandakan Spirit. She has recently filed this report:

‘In 2010, Wayne Wetherall, an Australian tour operator, undertook a trek along the 1945 POW death march track in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, with TYK Adventure Tours, a small company owned by a local man Tham Yau Kong. After recording the route on a GPS, Wetherall announced that he intended to conduct his own treks. In order to promote and attract business he then registered, as his internet domain name, a name that was identical (apart from a hyphen) to that used by TYK since 2005. He also downloaded, without permission, historical material copyrighted exclusively to me, onto his own website. (more…)

I recently spoke with a rather disgruntled trekker who questioned me about a Kokoda trek leader by the name of Narai Billy.  Apparently he googled Narai and ’learned‘ that he had trekked with me and a few other trekking companies.  This particular trekker thought he made an informed decision based on this information and saved around $2000 by trekking with Narai.

Big mistake!  He saw Narai at the start (when he collected his money) and a more inebriated version at the finish (when he had obviously spent his money),  In between, during his trek, he missed the half way food-drop (because it wasn’t delivered) and had to rely on the generosity of other trekking companies and local villagers to eat.  To say he was pissed off is an understatement! (more…)

Lynette Silver is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of History and the Arts.  She is the author of the acclaimed book ‘Sandakan – A Conspiracy of Silence’.  In 1995 Lynette was appointed official historian of the 8^th Australian Division, an appointment she held for seven years.

Lynette is an investigative historian.  In her most recent book ‘Marcel Caux – A Life Unravelled’ she unmasked the true identity of Australia’s last WW1 combat soldier, who for 85 years, passed himself off as someone else.  In 2009 her meticulous research exposed Arthur Crane, who claimed to be a POW and was in receipt of a veterans’ pension, as a fraud. He had never served.

In a letter to published in the Sabah Daily Express on 1 October 2011 she has challenged claims made by an ‘Australian operator’ (Wayne Wetherall of Kokoda Spirit and Sandakan Spirit) in regard to the Sandakan-Ranau Death March Route: (more…)