In August 1942 a battalion of 450 young ANZACS dug in around a remote jungle village high up in the Owen Stanley Ranges of New Guinea. They formed Australia’s ragged last line of defence against a seemingly invincible Japanese war machine which had swept unchecked through Asia and the Pacific.
The village was called Isurava. The narrow jungle track winding through it was called Kokoda! (more…)
Nobody knows what happened that day. Jethro was arming land-mines when they were hit. An explosion lifted him in the air and threw him onto his back. His mates in the squad were blasted but Jethro took the full brunt of the deadly mix of explosive powder and jagged shrapnel. (more…)
Sydney Morning Herald, November 25, 1995
Charlie Lynn’s holiday package includes a good measure of fear, exhaustion, injury and shock, which may be why Australia’s largest companies think he’s great. Marc Llewellyn reports:
THIRTEEN hours up a mountain and Xiaoling Liu is crawling on her hands and knees through the mud with a heavy rucksack on her back. The 42-year-old senior research scientist is almost blind from an insect bite which has left her face and body badly swollen. Both her ankles are twisted and she is close to giving up. (more…)
The Sydney Morning Herald.
May 25-31, 1998
Torrential Rain, mud slides and a 10-day trek – unorthodox methods for building self-esteem, but it worked for a group of troubled teenagers. Judy Adamson reports:
The rain is pouring onto the darkened jungle in heavy sheets. It’s three hours into a 10-day walk on the Kokoda Track and already Elizabeth, of the 10 disadvantaged teenagers involved, is exhausted and quietly weeping as she sits huddled in her rain jacket. (more…)
WE ARE indeed a strange collection of life’s assorted gathered here so far from home, checking our packs, checking out each other. Among us are the media’s most unfit, a professional fisherman, a surgeon-cum-ardent bushwalker, a marathon runner and a 70-year-old war veteran. We are on a pilgrimage for which, it turns out, we are largely unprepared (more…)
The Bulletin with Newsweek
May 1992
Leeches. Malaria. Blisters. Tinea. Treacherous creek crossings on narrow logs in the dark … writer Helen Pitt and photographer Valerie Martin (both 163cm and 59kg), with 18 other Australians, retrace the Kokoda Track nearly 50 years after the World War 11 battles. (more…)
Geo Magazine
May – June 1997
OVERCOME by emotion Dr John de Courcy halts mid-sentence. Lying almost flat, his head propped against the thatched wall of a smoke-filled hut in the remote ranges of Papua New Guinea, he tries to describe those who have influenced his life. After a short pause, he continues without inhibition and his audience listens with empathy. It’s the kind of exchange that only a collective experience – bordering on near hell – is likely to deliver. (more…)
The Australian on 24 April 1996
WHAT do you get when you combine the historic Kokoda Track with a bunch of celebrities? The answer, judging from Nine’s A Current Affair, is a disaster, of significant proportions, with the odd triumph thrown in. (more…)
You can almost taste the salt in the air this morning. Haze hangs in a heavy veil over the sea while the waves upsurge then dive into the sand with constant savagery. Crashing like my thoughts, one into another, blatant and uncontrollable. I feel the hardness of the park seat press my suit trousers against ageing bones, while fingers of cool air slip around my collar and I momentarily shiver. On the surface I appear as calm as the sea around the Long Reef headland up there in the distance. (more…)
The influx of Australians trekking the Kokoda Trail in PNG has resulted in an increased awareness of the plight of our closest neighbour. Trekkers arriving in Port Moresby for the first time are struck by the squalor of the settlements surrounding the city, the countless thousands of unemployed people, and the forbidding razor wire wrapped around every house in the city. (more…)