Our links to the Kokoda Trail were inspired by the service of VX 414563, Private Keith Charles Lynn, a New Guinea infantry veteran who was evacuated with scrub typhus and malaria – a lethal cocktail that he survived against the odds in 1943.

His son, Major Charlie Lynn, also saw active service in Vietnam; was assigned to the ANZUK force in Singapore; and later as an exchange instructor in airborne logistics with the US Army. During this assignment he successfully completed the Special Forces Military Freefall (HALO) Parachute Course and notched up 200 tactical jumps from as high as 20,000 feet – on oxygen – at night!

He is also a graduate of the Army Command and Staff College.

Prior to Charlie first trek in the lead up to the 50th anniversary of the Kokoda campaign there was no management structure in place and no mechanism for landowner communities to benefit from the few trekkers who passed by each year.

Over the next decade Charlie rediscovered some of the most significant battlesites which had been bypassed and reclaimed by the jungle. During this time he mapped the original wartime trails and published a 1:50,000 topographical map – the first of its kind since the War.

He was instrumental in establishing a PNG management authority to ensure local villagers received shared benefits from the emerging pilgrimage tourism industry.

Charlie’s company, Adventure Kokoda, has led more that 650 expeditions across the Kokoda Trail over the past 33 years – his trek leaders have a combined total of 160 years professional military experience – they have no equal as expedition leaders across the Kokoda Trail.

Our Vision

To enable the Kokoda Trail to achieve its potential as a high-value, world class pilgrimage tourism destination for the economic benefit of the traditional communities who own the land sacred to our shared military heritage

Our Kokoda Training Videos for Trekkers:

Our Youth Leadership Programs:

Our Television Programs:

Feature Articles:

Papua New Guinea Snapshots:

Author, Brett Caldwell, captured the essence of PNG in a memoir ‘Indifference’:

‘PNG’s fundamental nature is elusive, at least to foreigners. The small, culturally diverse population accounts for more than eight hundred and fifty of the six thousand or so existing human languages. Some clans still live among the bones of their ancestors, cloistered in isolated mountain valleys, in hamlets clinging to coastal fringes or scattered along the banks of slothful rivers. Many people live in shantytowns that hug the bounds of the young nation’s callow, betel nut-spit splattered cities.

‘Paradox prevails. It is a land where arse-grass and penis gourds mix with Hugo Boss suits and Rolex watches; where some men mine the hearts of volcanoes for gold, while others worship the spirits of ancestral crocodiles. It is a place where ferociously decorated warriors battle over women, land and pigs, with stout bows and homemade shotguns; where Asian loggers plunder ancient forests alongside Christian missionaries harvesting souls, and where Australian government bureaucrats try to impose their antipodean canons upon a culture where blood and bribery are thicker than holy water.’

Kokoda Trail Management Issues:

The arrival of officials from Canberra’s Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA) in 2009 was reminiscent of Keith Wiley’s observations in ‘Assignment New Guinea’ in 1965:

‘In recent years the academics have discovered New Guinea. Grave, plump, portentous, they swarm north in their hundreds each winter, generally finishing somewhere near Goroka in the Eastern Highlands where at times they become so numerous that every bush and stone seems to conceal a lurking bureaucrat or anthropologist.  After a few weeks or a few months they return home to prepare brisk solutions for all the problems which beset the land.  Too often they see New Guinea coldly as an exercise in nation-building to be carried out as quickly as possible, with one eye on the taxpayer at home and the other on some ranting demagogue in the United Nations.

‘At times the maligned colonialists, who walked ever the country and fought for it, seem to come nearer the heart of the matter.  Stripped of slogans and self- interest, New Guinea emerges not as a ‘problem’; to be ‘solved’, or assessed , but simply as a land, wild and beautiful, worthy to be loved for its own sake; with a people, backward, kindly, and in need of help[i].

Since Canberra arrived to ‘impose their antipodean canons on a culture where blood and bribery are thicker than holy water’ under the auspices of their ‘Kokoda Initiative’, pilgrimage tourism numbers have plummeted by 42 per cent which has resulted in a cumulative loss of almost $20 million in foregone wages, campsite fees and local purchases – the very people they have spent around $200 million trying to (supposedly) help!.

The Enemy Within:

Since Canberra officials from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment, and Water (DCCEEW) arrived to ‘impose their antipodean canons on a culture where blood and bribery are thicker than holy water’ under the auspices of their ‘Kokoda Initiative’, in 2009 pilgrimage tourism numbers have plummeted by 42% which has resulted in a cumulative loss of almost $20 million in foregone wages, campsite fees and local purchases for subsistence villages across the Kokoda Trail!

Sign the Petition:

We need help to make Kokoda an election issue. Please sign our petition to convince Albo and Peter Dutton to transfer responsibility for Kokoda from Climate Change to Veterans Affairs – and share it widely with your friends and networks.

Kokoda belongs under the management of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) alongside other important overseas historic military commemorative sites such as Gallipoli, Villers-Bretonneux (France), Hellfire Pass (Thailand), and Sandakan (Malaysia).

Military History:

Our Kokoda Philanthropy:

Our Kokoda Initiatives:

For Posterity:

In 2015 Charlie was proudly inducted as an Officer of the Logohu by the PNG Government in their New Years’ Honours List:

‘for service to the bilateral relations between Papua New Guinea and Australia and especially in the development of the Kokoda Trail and its honoured place in the history of both nations’ over the past 25 years.‘

Lest We Forget