Well it has taken about 8 months to write my last blog and finally I've finished it. I struggled on how to present it and decided on breaking up the blog into headings and explaining sections of the trek rather than a day by day account. I have listed the headings at the top (sorry it doesn't link to each section because I can't work out how to do that!)
Feel free to read parts or all of it. I hope you enjoy it and the photos and you get a sense of the trek itself.
OVERVIEW
1. Our Trek 2. Our trekking group & our porters 3. The Track itself 4. Weather
HIGHLIGHTS
1. Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel 2. Brigade Hill 3. Isurava Service
FOOD & ENTERTAINMENT
1. Passing the time while trekking 2. Food 3. Waterholes & Sport
KOKODA
1. Walking into Kokoda 2. Beer 3. Last night 4. Plane
OVERVIEW
1. Our Trek
Trekking to Kokoda from Owers Corner was amazing.
The track winds through the Owen Stanley Range which is mainly dense jungle, it goes up and down steep cliffs, over rivers and creeks and through villages. The track itself does change a bit due to parts being to muddy to walk through or fallen trees blocking the path. The locals just hack a new path if need be and life continues on.
We stayed in villages & campsites along the track which sometimes you can see a few kms out depending on how high up you are and other times they pop out in front of you, well hidden.
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| The start of the track |
The jungle foliage, terrain and temperature changed
considerably over the whole trek depending on where you were and how high up, we were
never lacking for beautiful views.
It is such a beautiful part of the world, very picturesque and unspoiled.
It is such a beautiful part of the world, very picturesque and unspoiled.
Our whole trip was pretty much incident free, we were very
lucky - we had no major injuries or illness. There were a few blisters which a
bit of vaseline fixed and general soreness which a dip in the river would help,
but our knees did ache for weeks after we got home.
I will admit that the trek itself was not as hard
as we thought it would be, BUT it was definitely not easy!
There were two main reasons it was easier than we
anticipated, firstly we trained, hard, and secondly was because we embraced what
we set out to do, we just went with it and enjoyed it for what it was. There
was a point where each of us hit a wall and it was tough, but you just dealt with
it and got on with it. I realised at the start that once you walked a part of
the track then you didn't have to walk it again, which meant you were always
closer to the finish.
When it did get tough, I'd feel the balls of my feet burning, my knees
aching and negative thoughts would creep into my mind. To combat this I would think
of who inspired me to do the trek. I would think of my grandfather and how proud
he would have been, I often thought of my sister who's no longer with us and I
would think of Turia the young woman who was severely burnt in a bushfire while
running a marathon (I saw her story on the 60 mins before I went).
We were certainly doing it easier than the diggers - we were using trekking poles, had awesome hiking boots on, dry socks, suncream, malaria tablets, muesli bars & lollies in our packs for when we got peckish, filtration tablets so we could drink as much
water as we wanted and a porter carrying my pack.
The diggers 70
years ago who trekked the same parts of the Owen Stanley range, had heavy guns
in hand, malaria, dysentery and lack of food, all the time looking in front of
them for the enemy who at any moment could shoot them dead. As a group we commented on this quite a bit during the trek, it was good to always have perspective.
We spent the whole time looking at our feet and
watching where we took our next step so we didn't fall, there were alot of
moments of thinking how on earth did these men look straight ahead for an enemy
and still put their foot right? And we only had to walk the track once, we
never had to retreat or turn back to get supplies, back and forth like ants
they went, we just had to walk up the god for saken wall of mud just once.
There were a few times that thinking about these men brought tears to my eyes.
Other times when you were feeling sorry for yourself you just had to look around at
the porters who were wearing no shoes or sneakers and were carrying ridiculous
amounts of weight for little money. This was something that
they were use to but only because alot of them started working as porters at a
young age. Most of them weren't from the track and at first you take it for
granted that they are fine, but once you get to know the porters, you learn
their stories and hardships and realise how shit of a job they have. The
trip makes you much more grateful for the little things in life. At the end of the trek we got to jump on a
plane and fly 25 mins back to Port Moresby, (yes, nine days to walk 25 mins to fly!) we were picked up by a transfer bus
dropped off at our hotel, had a hot shower, a beer and went for a swim - at the end for the porters they came to the airstrip to say
goodbye (and finish carrying our packs) and once we were on the plane they had to turn around and trek 3 days back over the track to meet another group to start all
over again.
The porters and people who live on the track don't
have a lot, so at the end of our trek everyone was encouraged to give the
porters and locals anything that they no longer needed.
All our first aid kits and non prescription medication
was all collected and donated to the Kokoda Hospital which relies heavily on
donations. Anything else such as clothes (literally off your back, they don't
care if it’s dirty) sleeping bags and trekking boots were given to the porters.
Unfortunately we had spent a great deal on our trekking equipment so that we
could use it again, but we were able to give some clothes, batteries, torches, electrical tape & cable ties. Pat my cousin gave away most of his stuff,
even his tent.
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| Dump 66 - first campsite |
2. Our trekking group & our porters
We had 5 trekkers in our group my cousin Patrick
(29), Jeremy (34) my husband, Dave (56) & Steph (20) who were father and
daughter (from Sydney), and myself.
Dave, Steph & myself had personal porters to
carry our packs and Pat & Jeremy carried their own. The boys carried about
19kg each on their backs and my daypack weighed about 8kg.
There were about 6 other porters in our group who
carried our food, Doug our lead porter and Alan our trek manager.
Our trek was a PNG lead one while the other group
who started and finished at the same time as us was lead by an Australian.
Their trek leader was Richard who was doing his 50th trek and was 69 years old.
My personal porter was Oswald (Ossie), he was the
son of our trek manager and was only 12 years old. OMG did I feel guilty on the
first day handing over my pack to him.
All our packs were weighed at Ower's Corner and we
were worried my pack would be too heavy for Ossie. After weighing my pack,
Ossie's Dad added more weight to it! I also must mention that Ossie trekked in
bare feet as well.
The porters were mainly from Port Moresby while
some of them had family in the villages along the track. They were a great
group of guys that helped us along the way, they cooked, cleaned and
entertained us. They were also there to steady us when the terrain got way to muddy.
We would often meet up with the other group, so
their porters would entertain us as well. By the end they were like family. Joe
one of our porters would call me 'my sister' and would call Jeremy 'tomble',
not sure how it is spelt. At first I thought he was calling him 'tumbles'
because Jeremy, although he won't admit it, kept tripping over, but I found out
later it meant ‘brother in law’.
We made a rule that the first person to fall over
would buy the first round of beers when we got to Kokoda.
There was a third trekking group that left from
Ower's Corner on the same day as us, they however went along Mission Ridge
rather than following the track through Brigade Hill. Angry Anderson from Rose
Tattoo (a band from the 80s for those Gen Y's who have no clue who he is) was
trekking with this group. They finished in Kokoda the same day as us.
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| Doug & Angry Anderson |
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| Our porters |
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| Joe & Me |
3. The Track itself
The track was pretty consistent the whole way
along, consistently muddy! The mud did change colour and varied in
degrees of slipperiness but in the end was still mud.
Dave had a copy of 'The Field Guide to the Kokoda
Track' which was able to tell us the types of mud we were traipsing through,
black loam, clay loam, loam and clay, by the end it was just mud to us! Luckily
I had a dictionary app on my iphone so we knew what loam was - a rich soil
consisting of a mixture of sand, clay and decaying organic materials, in
other words, mud (and no I couldn't get service!).
No part of the track was ever straight or flat and
you had to be aware of every step you made. It was so easy to put a foot wrong
and slip over, and there was always the chance of injury. There are parts of
the track where slipping over meant falling down a sheer drop, so not much chatting
happened along these parts and I unfortunately didn't get any pics because it was to dangerous.
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| Swamp |
We had quite a lot of river & creek crossings over the first few days and a couple of swamps to trudge through. On the second day
we crossed a creek 22 times - we had to take our boots off and wear our other
pair of shoes for water crossings. It was so nice to dry our feet and get the
boots back on, although the cold of the water was often refreshing on your
feet.
4. Weather
The weather wasn't to bad, I
was worried before we went that we hadn't climatised enough and would be hit
with high humidity compared to our freezing Melbourne winter. Port Moresby was hot and a little humid and the same with the start of the
trek.
On the first 2 days it rained while we trekked but was refreshing because
you were continually sweating. As we got higher up the humidity wasn't as bad,
the temperature was still hot but the nights were quite cool. At the top of Mt
Bellamy it was very cold, not Melbourne cold but cold enough to want to huddle
around the fire and thankful that we brought warm sleeping bags.
We were told it was the wettest track in 11 years.
HIGHLIGHTS
1. Fuzzy
Wuzzy Angel
On Day 4 we trekked ‘The
Wall’ which was a steep hard climb that took us to the Menari Gap then we had a
steep descent down into Naduri Village where we got to meet the last remaining
Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel. Ovoru Indiki is also the village chief.
Ovoru was in Port Moresby when the
Japanese first bombed the city. He did not understand what was going on and he
fled to the bush in fear. Over the next couple of days Ovoru made his way back
to his village - only moving at night because of fear. He told his people what
had happened and they began to make arrangements to 'go bush'. Lieutenant Bert
Kienzle of the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit eventually came to the
village and enlisted Ovoru and the other men in the village to help the
Australians. Ovoru then spent the next three months carrying supplies forward
to our troops and carrying our wounded back across the track.
Ovoru is now 106 and doesn’t say much
but we were able to shake his hand and thank him for helping the Aussie’s. This
was definitely a highlight of the trek and I was glad I was wearing my sunnies when I met him as I had tears in my eyes.
2. Brigade Hill
On day 5 we trekked to Brigade Hill in time for
morning tea.
Brigade Hill is an impressive mountain ridge
roughly halfway along the Kokoda Track and was originally known as Efogi
Ridge.
It was the site of one of the most horrific
delaying battles the Australians had to fight and was fought over three days. Brigadier Arnold Potts, Commander of Maroubra Force
was ordered to stand and fight and keep the advancing Japanese as far north of
Port Moresby as possible, 101 soldiers lost their lives here.
There is a memorial on top of the hill which looks
out over Mission Ridge with spectacular views, it is so peaceful and you just
can't imagine carnage in such a beautiful place. There are rows and rows of
sticks marking the diggers who died in this battle. It was the first time I
cried on the trek openly, it was a very moving and sacred place. Even now the
tears are welling in my eyes as I type this.
On Day 8 we trekked to Isurava Battlefield, this is
the memorial site which most people would recognise, it has 4 marble pillars,
which read Courage, Endurance, Mateship and Sacrifice. I always thought this
was at the end situated in Kokoda but it's not, it is a
common misconception.
It's was at Isurava where the Battle of
Isurava took place and where Bruce Kingsbury won the only Victoria Cross
received in this campaign. We arrived here at the same time as the other
trekking group and joined them for a service. I was able to wear my
grandfathers medals which I had been carrying in my day pack, this was a great
honour. The other trek leader Richard asked me to read 'The Ode' as I was the only
one wearing medals -
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
I like to think that we experienced all four pillars on our trek,
Courage to do the trek, Endurance to finish it, Mateship between us & the
porters and Sacrifice, this for us was the time we dedicated to training. Not
quite the same as fighting a war, but to be honest that is the closest I ever
want to get to a war. I have so much respect for those in the armed services
and to have done the trek with Pat who was in the army for seven years was a
privilege.
Once the service was finished we all laid a poppy
and then the PNG guys all sang their national anthem which was beautiful and
then us Aussies all sang our national anthem, it was awesome but not so
beautiful, gee we cannot sing!
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| Service at Isurava |
Food & Entertainment
1. Passing the time while trekking
There were quite a few funny moments and most of the time we entertained ourselves while we walked.
Pat & Jeremy would always kick it
off, I don't think Pat could go for more than 2 minutes of silence and Jeremy
just liked talking crap! Pat would sing, and often just sang anything he was
saying, he would also sing jingles, which got us all going and we found ourselves
singing every type of jingle from being ‘happy little Vegemite's to nursery
rhymes and then trying to figure out what happened to the old woman who swallowed
a fly.
Jeremy spent the whole trek and I mean the whole
trek, from Owers Corner to Kokoda trying to remember the wide world of sports
theme, I don't think we ever got it right. I spent most of the trek singing
'eye of the tiger', I thought it was quite fitting!
And then when Pat or Jeremy weren't talking which was rare and all was quiet Joe one of the porters would pop up out of nowhere and yell out 'let's rock'n’roll', that became our catch cry for the whole trek.
When we weren't talking or singing to pass the time
we were concentrating.
If you were up the front with Doug our trek leader
you got to chat to him. Jeremy spent most of the time talking about Hawthorn;
Doug was a huge Hawks supporter and had taken a few of the team members and
Jeff Kennett on a trek. He came to Melbourne a couple of years ago and got to visit
the MCG, met all the players and attended lunches with them. Jeremy & Doug
had a bit to talk about. The great thing was Doug had the official Hawks Kokoda
Guernsey which was the same as mine and Jeremy had his normal Hawks Guernsey,
we made sure that on one of the days all three of us wore them. We also had several hawks’
caps which we get each year for being a member so we handed them out to our
porters. It was an added bonus that we happen to have a trek leader who was a
huge Hawks supporter, it made Jeremy's week.
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| Jeremy, myself & Doug with our Hawks guernseys |
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| All the porters signatures |
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| The porters and their Hawks caps |
2. Food
We had all our meals prepared for us by the
porters and even better they did all the washing up, I was in heaven, I think that was the highlight of my trip!
Breakfast was always cereal as well as something hot, such as pancakes
or small pasties.
We would stop for morning tea along the track each day where Doug would supply us with tim tams or other assorted arnotts biscuits, the tim tams were a great treat!
Lunch, we always had a choice of something hot like 2
minute noodles, tinned spaghetti or small pasties filled with left over’s, sao biscuits, cheese and
spam. I found I was always having sao's, cheese and spam for my lunch, which I
craved even when we got back, before the trip I hated spam!
Dinner was always rice or pasta, lots of carbs!
The meals were simple but tasty and
always went down well after trekking for hours and there was always boiling water for tea or coffee.
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| Lunch |
3. Waterholes & Sport
We walked for 5-7 hours a day, we usually got into camp early arvo which left us plenty of time to enjoy some daylight before dinner.
As soon as we stopped it was off with the boots, we'd empty our packs, unroll our tents and lay everything out to dry after being stuffed in our bags all day.
While the tents were drying (they were wet from the dew or rain the night before) we would go and wash off in the river or if we were lucky the village would have a pump and we could have a 'shower'. No hot water only freezing water straight from the river, it was very refreshing on aching muscles.
Although sometimes I wouldn't hang around the waterhole to long because there was often lily white middle aged Aussie men in budgie smugglers!! I was happy to hang around when the very fit PNG guys were swimming!
After a swim we would head back to set up our tents if your porter hadn't already. The locals, mainly woman and children (the men were working along the track), would come out and watch us set up, they found it quite amusing.
Jeremy would entertain the kids by making games out of blowing up the mattresses, they thought he was hilarious.
After setup the porters would start a game of rugby, that was our afternoon entertainment, some of the guys were game enough to go up against the PNGs who were extremely fit. Steph, Jeremy & Pat would all play while Dave & I watched, no need to over exert ourselves when you had to trek through a jungle the next day! And to Jeremy's delight they did manage a couple of games of Aussie rules.
KOKODA
1. Walking into Kokoda
On our 9th day of the trek we got up in the morning, packed our packs for the second to last time on the trek and headed off on our way to the town of Kokoda.
Kokoda has a population of 6000, a small hospital that relies on donations, a couple of shops and an airstrip. It also has a war museum, which was locked on the day we were departing and no one could locate the person to unlock it. So we missed out but took photos of the outside and the memorials.
Knowing we would arrive in Kokoda was exciting, we knew that a warm shower and a comfortable bed was only 1 more day away.
Trekking on the last day wasn't to bad, it was all mostly down hill and then towards the end after we passed through Kovelo it was all flat ground.
We passed through a village called Deniki and had morning tea in Hoi. We only had a few hours to trek on this day, once through Hoi, the track was a flat dirt road lined by a few houses. After awhile the arches came into view. Beck and I walked through first as we were up the front, I then took pics of all the guys coming through. this meant I then had to go back and walk through the arches again so I could have a photo!
We then headed to our last campsite where we set up tents along with the other trekking group who made it into camp about an hour or so after us. Once set up we walked down to the river to wash off and the porters cleaned our boots, it wasn't the last time we needed to wear them but it was the last time we needed to clean them. No more mud, hurray!
2. Beer
For those that don't drink you're probably thinking why put a section in about beer? I've added this as it wasn't just a matter of popping to the local for a coldy, we had to be escorted to a tin shed to get any alcohol. So......we'd made it to Kokoda and our illusions of an ice cold beer being handed to us as we walked through the arches was just that - an illusion.
After setting up camp that afternoon the porters walked us about a km downhill to a 'shop' so we could buy some beer.
Kokoda unlike the rest of the track is quite unsafe, we were told that all belongings had to be zipped in the tents at night or packed in with the porters as people came round and stole things.
At the time the countries election was also going on and alcohol had been banned in Kokoda for the locals - we were still allowed to buy beer, but it was still dodgy.
The shop was a huge tin shed with a counter that ran around three sides and was blocked in by wire. Behind the wire was everything you could buy, you had to get served through a hole in the wire. Because of the ban on beer, when we bought a case they had to wrap it in a coke box so that the locals wouldn't know we were carrying alcohol. And the case wasn't any cheaper than buying each can individually.
We then 'trekked' back up the big hill to our camp where we finally got to drink a beer after trekking through the jungle for 9 days. To be honest it was actually the last thing I felt like!
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| The blue tin 'shop' where we bought beer (this photo was taken the next day on the way to the airstrip) |
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| Walking back to camp |
The other trekking group that started with us ended with us to. Once we were all set up and everyone had their drinks the other group joined us and we spent our last night together talking about our adventure, and of course watching another game of rugby.
4. Plane
On day 10 it was time to head back to Port Moresby. We had a short walk to the airstrip where the 3 trekking groups all met to wait for the little planes to come and get us. The flight back took 30mins and took longer to wait for our turn to be picked up.
The planes held about 9 passengers and there was about 50 of us that needed to be flown back and only 2 planes, so they did multiple trips.
I was asked quite a bit if I had been nervous about flying back in such a small plane, (back in 2010 one of them crashed killing everyone on board), but no I wasn't bothered. I was to excited about getting back to the hotel, having a hot shower and putting on fresh clothes to ever be worried about the flight.
SUMMARY
It was a bloody amazing experience, made even better by the time & effort we put into training for it and the fact I was able to do it with my husband and cousin was an added bonus.
We read the Kokoda book as we trained and that gave us some insight into what the trip was truly about. We were physically fit when we left but we also went into the whole experience with a great mindset which I think got us through the whole trek. We did stop to smell the roses along the way so to speak and enjoyed every moment of it, including the mud, aches & pains, spam and even the long drops!
Here are a few things I got out of this adventure -
An appreciation of our defence forces past and present;
The great pride I feel about being an Australian, every time I sing the national anthem it brings me to tears;
A new excitement for exercise and feeling fit and strong;
Setting myself a goal which takes time and achieving it.
It's an adventure that we highly recommend and we would all put our hands up to do again.
If anyone is thinking about taking up the challenge and learning about our significant history, then I suggest stop thinking and book it now!
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| Efogi |
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| Menari Village |
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| Naduri Village |
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| Templeton's Crossing |
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| Kokoda - porters cleaning boots |
