THE CHALLENGE of KOKODA 03

 

PART 3 - A YOUNG JOURNO'S TREK 

 

WRITER LEIAO GEREGA OUTSIDE HER TENT

Estimations show that eco-Kokoda trekking industry now generates approximately PNG17 million (A$7.04 million) a year into the PNG economy but the KTA under its Chief executive officer is being paid just K25,000 to manage the entire operation without any qualified staff.

Reports note that under this arrangement it is not possible to develop the necessary procedures and systems to properly manage and administer trekking operations across the Kokoda Trail.

It further shows that the PNG Kokoda Track Special Authoritu established since 2003 has a rather dysfunctional role where the system has not provided qualified training for staff.

Author, Peter Fitzsimons who trekked the Kokoda with Charlie Lynn in November 2002 wrote: “At Gallipoli our blokes fought for England and lost. At Kokoda they fought for Australia and won.

The statement leaves many a trekker to wonder why successive Australian governments continue to show ignorance and neglect over protecting and keeping alive the memories of a wartime history where fierce battles raged on in places such as Deniki, Isurava, Eora Creek Templeton Crossing, Myola, Brigade Hill, Ioribaiwa, Imita Ridge and the list goes on.

According to Major Lynn, interest in the Kokoda Trail lay dormant for 50 years until Paul Keating became the first Australian Prime Minister to visit the area in 1992.

It was heightened with the opening of a significant memorial by Prime Ministers’ John Howard and Sir Michael Somare on the 60th anniversary of the battle in 2002. A proposal to mine the southern section of the trail for gold in 2006 saw the Australian Government react by establishing a Joint Agreement with the PNG Government to develop a case for a World Heritage Listing for the Owen Stanley Ranges.

Responsibility was then allocated to the Department of Environment as they are responsible for the Register of Overseas Heritage Sites. The Australian Department of Environment assumed control of the Kokoda Trail in 2008 until the responsibility was then transferred to DFAT in 2015.

It should be noted that the Department of Veterans Affairs who are responsible for commemoration and overseas memorials were sidelined in the bureaucratic process as wartime heritage is not a consideration for a World Heritage listing.

Three years later their record speaks for itself, trekker numbers declined by 48 percent from 5621 in 2008 to 2,914 in 2011.

The more obvious reasons for the decline include consultants working on problems they don’t understand, lack of empathy with the Koiari and Orokaiva cultures and isolation of the pioneering trek operators familiar with these challenges.

Post-Courier in an interview with the Australian shadow minister Richard Marles during the ANZAC dawn service received the following response.

“This is a priority for Australia and Papua new guinea government and so it’s really important that we get the partnership as best as we can so that the trail is operating in a sustainable way but also in a way which helps people to understand the history of what happened then.

 “The track isn’t in the best state as it can be and that’s certainly something that I maintain an interest in and will be keen in whatever capacity in the future to try and help bring that up.”

The Opposition leader, Bill Shorten, who trekked Kokoda in 2008 seems to be closer to the mark in protecting the wartime heritage of the Kokoda Trail who in his policy includes the following commitment:

‘A Shorten Labor Government will honour our Second World War soldiers who trekked the Kokoda Trail through a Joint Master Plan to acknowledge the importance of Kokoda in Australia’s military history.  

‘Labor’s Joint Master Plan will bring together various departments in Australia and Papua New Guinea to develop a plan that recognises the environmental, cultural and wartime significance of the Kokoda Trail.  

‘Our Joint Master Plan will complement the Kokoda Initiative, which was first signed in 2008 and is scheduled to conclude in June 2020.  

‘This $2 million investment from Labor is a nod to those who fought through in the jungle on the Kokoda Trail, recognising the environmental, cultural and wartime significance of the site, conserving it into the future’.

On one hand, there is no evidence of any action being taken by the Coalition Government to develop a master plan since they were elected in 2013. They have not developed a single memorial since then and the management system they sponsor has collapsed. Their commitment for the trail if they are re-elected does not inspire much confidence for the sacred place.

Bill Shorten’s commitment of $2 million (K.7 million) for a master plan would therefore seem to be the best outcome for the tourism potential of the Kokoda Trail to be realised.

While I knew nothing of Kokoda trail, neither of the tour operators numbering 33 who come with trekkers ranging from 10-30 people to walk the trail some for charity purposes, others as pilgrimage and others with reasons to make money and go away, I knew that both trekkers, porters and villages seem to have missed out on benefitting from a heritage site that could be better managed under wartime tourism if considered.

I recall the journey we took starting from McDonald’s Corner to Owers corner on Sunday April 14 commencing with the walk to the Goldie River towards the Goodwater campsite and noted Major Charlie Lynn’s historical account and the argument that much of the sites where history unfolded now remain empty, neglected and forgotten.

The fact that thousands of young militia men both Australians and Papua New Guineans died along the trail with no proper memorabilia to remember their effort implicates a sad state of affairs in the military history of both nations.

As a trekker who once traversed the highest waterfall located on the island of Iriomote in the Ryukyu group of islands in the Southern part of Japan, I recall being impressed particularly by the brown wood signposts that told us exactly where we were and helped us glean more information on the path and its significance.

Hearing from Charlie and seeing exactly what he meant by “neglect” I couldn’t imagine how trekkers who walked the trail, could ever understand the impact, the reality and the whole history of their forefathers in a war where they gave their lives for their country, a battle most described as one of the darkest in the Pacific war history.

At Owers Corner one could not help but wonder at the unwelcoming sight of two huts standing empty, supposedly built as a campsite and left abandoned because the authority had never had any proper land negotiations with the land owners.

During a conversation with a trekker who’s walked the trail a number of times, he said he feels angry that little if anything at all has been done to record war sites and protect war relics beginning from Owers to Kokoda except for the impressive Isurava memorial site.

Built in accordance with the ‘principal of commemoration in perpetuity’, the Isurava war battle site was rediscovered by Major Lynn in 1996 who later arranged for a number of veterans from the 39^th and2/14^th Battalion to return to the site to verify its location.