by Charlie Lynn
9 December 2008
Fearing a reaction similar to the recent public relations disaster over the road in Gallipoli, the former Howard government sprang into action and announced a $15 million allocation to have the Kokoda Trail listed as a World Heritage Area. This figure seemed to have derived from an old army SWAG formula – a ‘Scientific Wild Arsed Guess‘!
While the announcement went some way to appeasing the cries of protest in Australia, it is unlikely to meet the expectations of clan leaders and landowners along the Kokoda Trail. Indeed, there is every indication that the $15 million will be consumed by Australian consultants, committees and conferences as they engage in a frenetic loop of reports, recommendations and reviews.
Kokoda offers a thrill of adventure for Australians who have had most of the risk removed from their daily lives through ridiculous OH&S laws and layers of social safety nets. They want to walk in the footsteps of the brave and ‘do it tough’ as a mark of respect to a generation who grew from the challenge of adversity.
They don’t want environmental boardwalks – they want mud. They don’t want an eco-environmental levitation – they want the historical hardship of the track. They don’t want to be clean and green – they want to be sweaty and dirty. They don’t want Kakadu – they want Kokoda!
But the spirit of Kokoda is in danger of transformation into a monument to environmentalism rather than a living memorial to our diggers.
In the five-page ‘Joint Understanding between PNG and Australia on the Kokoda Track (sic) and Owen Stanley Ranges’, the word ‘memorial’ or ‘battlesite’ is not mentioned. The document is peppered with the new language of the global warmers – ‘carbon partnerships’, ‘national forest carbon accounting systems’, ‘future international emissions trading’, ‘REDD demonstration activities and global climate stability underpinning global eco-systems, etc’. ‘Military heritage’ has been replaced by ‘World heritage’.
The Joint Understanding commits to ‘deploying experts to the PNG Department of the Environment and Conservation to facilitate PNG Government processes to enable identification and consideration of a proposed World Heritage Site, etc. etc’. No mention is made of deploying military historians to identify battlesites sacred to our heritage, to dispatch bomb disposal experts to assess the dangers of unexploded ordnance along the track, or experts from our War Memorial to establish a similar institution in Port Moresby. The preservation of our joint military heritage does not rate a mention.
It is easy to interpret ‘joint understandings’ between Australia and PNG as a euphemism for ‘big brother’. It’s OK for Australia to send ‘experts’ to PNG but we continue to deny them access to our seasonal markets even though our farmers have desperate labour shortages. It is easier for a PNG citizen to get a casual job in London than in Brisbane. Proper ‘joint understandings’ don’t have one-way valves.
This fact is not lost on leaders in PNG!
Trekker numbers have grown exponentially over the years – from 76 in 2001 to 5117 in 2007. We have watched as an inexperienced authority was established to manage our sacred ground along the track. We have watched as it collapsed into a self-indulgent system of corruption. We have calculated the benefits to the PNG economy to be around $10 million dollars in 2007, but we shy away from the fact that very little reaches the villages along the track. It is little wonder that landowners are attracted to mining and forestry opportunities.
The Australian – PNG Joint Understanding committed to ‘addressing immediate needs for the 2008 trekking season and create interim Kokoda Track management arrangements’. This is the highest priority once the froth and bubbles have been cleared from the document. But as thousands of Australians make the pilgrimage across the track, nothing is yet in place to meet this key commitment.
Kokoda is a jungle shrine. It is the most significant pilgrimage an Australian can make in search of the qualities that define our national character. We need to rethink our strategy and ensure that departments entrusted with the preservation of our military heritage, such as the Australian War Graves Commission, the Australian War Memorial, and Defence, have a leading role in assisting PNG in caring for our sacred sites from the Pacific War.
When this article was first published on 9 December 2008, Kokoda trekker numbers had peaked at 5,621.
Since Canberra took control of Kokoda tourism under the guise of a ‘Joint’ Understanding earlier that year, trekker numbers have crashed by 52% per cent to around 2,700 in 2025, while the number of taxpayer-funded officials, consultants, environmentalists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and social engineers have grown exponentially.
Since that time, no funds have been allocated to preserve, honour, and interpret the military heritage of the Kokoda campaign which was the primary motivation for the 65,000 Australians who have trekked across it over the past 25 years.
More recently, Canberra has directed that all taxpayer funds for their ‘Kokoda Initiative’ are to be directed towards Climate Change, Gender Equity and GBV at the expense of our sharted military heritage.
Charlie Lynn is a Member of the NSW Legislative Council. He is a former army officer and has trekked Kokoda 49 times over the past 17 years. He is a director of Adventure Kokoda P/L.
