by Charlie | Mar 17, 2019 | Kokoda Forum, Papua New Guinea
Hidden away in this newsletter, written by the Australian CEO assigned to the Kokoda Track Authority by the Department of Environment in Canberra, is the following innocuous paragraph:
Following are the Australian Parks and Wildlife Services specifications for Class 4 walking tracks and our response to each one.
Overview:
Opportunity for visitors with advanced outdoor knowledge to find their own way along often indistinct tracks in remote areas. Users can expect frequent opportunities for solitude with few encounters with others.
Response: This opportunity exists for eco- trekkers to use the Kapa Kapa track across the Owen Stanley Ranges to the east of the Kokoda Trail. Kokoda is not about ‘solitude’ and ‘few encounters’. It is a military historical pilgrimage that should not be restricted to elite bushwalking purists. (more…)
by Charlie | Mar 14, 2019 | Kokoda News
Cooeee troops,
As we kick off our 2019 Kokoda trekking season it’s time to show us your tat’s.
The best 5 tat’s will receive a bronze Kokoda lapel pin – send them through to Tracie at tracie@kokodatreks.com.au
by Charlie | Feb 24, 2019 | Kokoda Forum, Uncategorized
PNG has two choices for wartime tourism – it can continue to operate as a Third World destination with Third World management systems and Third World campsite facilities – or it can develop a marketing strategy aimed towards becoming the wartime destination of choice for First World international trekkers.
Executive Summary
The CEO of PNG Tourism requested feedback from Kokoda trek operators on issues discussed at a forum conducted by the Kokoda Track Authority in Brisbane on 28 November 2018.
One of the key topics covered at the forum was the subject of marketing Kokoda.
This response is based on the collective views of Adventure Kokoda trek leaders who have a combined total of 130 years professional army experience and who have led more than 520 expeditions across the trail over the past 28 years.
The response examines the potential of a wartime tourism industry based on the development of a successful management model for the Kokoda Trail. It examines the factors relevant to the Kokoda trekking industry over the past decade and suggests a marketing strategy based on Anzac Day, Kokoda Day, the development of Owers Corner, a Military Heritage Master Plan; and social media.
The response concludes that PNG can continue to operate as a Third World tourism destination with Third World management systems and Third World campsites/toilets – or it can develop a marketing strategy to become the wartime destination of choice for First World international trekkers.
It’s not about money – Kokoda is already sustainable. It’s not about meetings, forums and workshops – nothing has been achieved from these for more than a decade. It’s about vision, understanding, leadership and commitment. (more…)
by Charlie | Feb 8, 2019 | Kokoda News, Network Kokoda
Network Kokoda is proud to announce 20 scholarships for students from Western Sydney University (WSU) to allow them to participate in a 12 day study program at the Iaowari High School on the Sogeri Plateau in Papua New Guinea.
The scholarship program is a collaborative project in partnership with the Hawkesbury Campus of Western Sydney University, Richmond Rotary, Network Kokoda and DFAT. It is being funded by the Australian Government’s new Colombo Plan and is the first project of its kind in Papua New Guinea under the plan.
The scholarship provides WSU students from all disciplines with the opportunity to travel to PNG and will showcase and highlight our shared wartime history and the legacy of our veterans. Students will connect with a diverse group of local organisations including Network Kokoda, Sogeri Community Resource Centre and Iarowari High School and work on local projects aligned to their area of interest and/or discipline for credit. These activities will include:
- Australian World War 2 history including a day trek on the Kokoda Trail and an overnight camp on Goldie River
- Cultural immersion activities, ‘Tok Pisin’ language lessons and community development workshops
- Site tour of Varirata National Park for bird watching and war monuments
- Week long internship/project with local partners: Sogeri Community Resource Centre, Iarowari High School and Network Kokoda
This new partnership is the culmination of a long association between Network Kokoda and Iaowari High School.
Our association with the school started with a chance meeting with a group of female teachers at the school in early 2010. They had all studied agriculture but the subject was not taught at the school because they could not secure their gardens and their produce ‘kept going missing’ soon after the seedlings had matured. (more…)
by Charlie | Jan 23, 2019 | Kokoda News
‘Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte’ wrote Blaise Pascal, a French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, in 1657. ‘I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter’ is the English translation
Pascal was trying to explain that his letter was longer than it needed to be, because he hadn’t worked out the correct answer.
The Kokoda Tour Operators Association used a similar approach in their latest 620 word diatribe to justify the ongoing exploitation of local PNG porters they engage.
Buried amongst a plethora of motherhood statements is the admission that they will continue to exploit their porters by overloading them.
What part of the fact that a 22.5 kg backpack is too heavy for porters to have to lug across difficult, muddy, mountainous terrain doesn’t the KTOA get?
The weight of 22.5 kg was imposed by an Australian bureaucrat under pressure from Australian trek operators who wanted to minimise their costs by having to employ fewer porters. The bureaucrat who made the decision had never trekked Kokoda and would have had difficulty lifting his 22.5 kg case onto aircraft luggage scales at any check-In counter.
The KTOA has a long history of lobbying – some would say bullying – the PNG Kokoda Track Authority (KTA).
At a PNG Tour Operators Forum in Port Moresby on 8 November 2017, sixty-three (63) PNG delegates representing Provincial and Local Level Government, landowners, trek operators and porters voted unanimously to reduce the maximum weight to 18 kg.
Three (3) KTA management officials, the CEO, the Operations Officer and the President of the PNG Guides and Porters Association were tasked with presenting the motion to the Australian Tour Operators Forum in Brisbane the following week.
For reasons known only to the KTA team the CEO did not table the motion and the President of the Guides and Porters Association went missing. The Minutes of the forum have never been produced despite numerous requests.
This has all the hallmarks of a cover-up and begs the following questions:
- Why were the Minutes not tabled nor discussed at the Cairns Forum?
- Why did the representative of the Porters and Guides Association absent himself from the meeting?
- Was the motion discussed ‘out of session’ between KTA officials and the Kokoda Tour Operators Association KTOA)? and
- Why have the Minutes of the Cairns Forum never been released?
Whatever the reason the KTOA was able to get away with the abhorrent practice of overloading their porters for another year despite the fact that one of their porters, who was allegedly overloaded, had died on the trail. According to a preliminary investigation by the Sogeri Police Sergeant, Max Maso: ‘It is evident that the group on this particular trip . . . engaged by . . . (KTOA tour operator) . . . were all overloaded in breach of the Code of Conduct stipulated under this code’.
Over the past year the KTOA has used fake research and dubious comparisons to justify the overloading of their porters in spite of the fact that the maximum weight allowable by both military and civilian authorities on the Kokoda Trail in 1942 was 18 kg.
They have been assisted by the fact that the current management structure put in place by the Australian Government from 2009 – 2012 has collapsed. The system is currently under under administration while a review, ordered by the PNG Prime Minister, is carried out.
Until then local PNG guides and porters will continue to be exploited by KTOA members until a mandated code of practice, with specific minimum standards, is put in place by the management authority – or until the KTOA accepts that the welfare of guides and porters should be in accordance with standards established during the Kokoda campaign in 1942. (more…)
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