Keith Jackson & Friends: PNG ATTITUDE

Private Archibald’s spirit returns to his Country

BY ROD PLANT

ON SATURDAY IN ARMIDALE, New South Wales, the Archibald family completed the return of Private Frank Archibald's spirit to his Country.

Eighteen days after the Behiri traditional owners of the land Bomana War Cemetery stands on so carefully dug up soil from Private Frank's grave, and the graves of five of his Aboriginal comrades killed defending Papua New Guinea and Australia, he is at rest.

More than 40 Archibald descendants from four generations joined hands around the graves of Frank and Sarah, the parents of Private Frank.

The Bomana service was read in English and Gumbaynggirr, and the didgeridoo players and dancers performed exactly as they had done in Bomana.

Each relative then took tiny pieces of the soil from Private Frank's grave and scattered it on at least ten Archibald family graves around the Armidale Cemetery.

As we were finishing on a sunny afternoon, a mighty storm blew up, raged briefly, then passed.  We felt that all the spirits called from Bomana and Lae cemeteries, and from the start of the Kokoda Track, had come with Private Frank.

Perhaps they will rest with him until the relatives of the other diggers have received their soil and scatter it on the Country of each of the fallen, to help them find their way back home at last.

We trust this will bring peace to his family - a warrior returned to his Country.

Rod Plant is chairperson of the Kokoda Aboriginal Servicemen's Campaign Committee

Two cultures meet in memory of an Anzac sacrifice

THE FAMILY OF AN INDIGENOUS Australian serviceman killed in action during the Kokoda campaign in November 1942, is visiting his Bomana gravesite to perform a traditional Aboriginal grieving ceremony.

And in marking the event, the Koiari people of the Papuan Behiri clan is welcoming the family with a singsing in their honour.

Private Frank Archibald was shot trying to save a friend.

His family will perform the necessary Aboriginal cultural ceremonies that will bring Private Archibald’s soul to rest, and enable the family to enjoy peace and a sense of closure over their loss of their young relative 70 years after his death.

The family includes 74-year old Aunty Grace Gordon (nee Archibald), the only surviving member of Private Archibald’s 11 siblings, and Uncle Richard Archibald, who is the last remaining male relative able to perform traditional burial rites.

Traditionally when Aboriginal people die, they are interred in the country of their ancestors.

When this cannot happen, ceremonies are carried out to ensure the person’s spirit leaves the area where they died and returns to its place of birth, where it can be reborn.

The Kokoda Aboriginal Servicemen's Campaign Committee with the assistance of the Australian government sponsored members of the Archibald family to visit the grave site.

The KASCC aims to achieve social justice for Aboriginal servicemen who were killed in action fighting for Australia on foreign soil.

Kokoda keeps on inspiring Aussies, 70 years on

TRAVEL BLACKBOARD

OVER 3,000 TREKKERS are walking the Kokoda Track this year as the Papua New Guinea Tourism Promotion Authority promotes the 70th Anniversary of the Kokoda Campaign with commemorative treks being run by many tour operators.

Recent research estimates that each year trekkers visiting the Kokoda area have contributed millions of dollars to the PNG economy.

This income benefits local communities, led by the Kokoda Initiative, a joint partnership between the PNG and Australian governments.

Reminding Australians of the special bond forged between the countries 70 years ago, Chairman of the Kokoda Track Authority, Ruben Maleva, encouraged people to trek Kokoda. An estimated 30,000 Australians have returned to trek Kokoda since Australian soldiers left PNG.

“This has made a huge impact to the local communities aiding development with increased education and health services, creating jobs for porters, guides and guesthouse operators and other small businesses,” Mr Maleva said.

This year’s anniversary not only gives Australians a chance to reflect on this important part of the two country’s shared history, but the TPA hopes it will lead to more Australians being inspired to do the trek and in turn contribute to the communities along it.

Gloucester remembers the Oivi-Gorari battle

GLOUCESTER ADVOCATE (NSW)

A GROUP OF GLOUCESTER locals [pictured] is commemorating Anzac Day at Bomana War Cemetery before visiting the forgotten battlefields of Oivi and Gorari, east of Kokoda.

The tour is led local John Farley, who has walked the Kokoda Track. 

Last year he and wife Judy laid a poppy of remembrance at Bomana on the grave of Gloucester soldier Private John Taylor who died in the battle of Oivi-Gorari on 10 November 1942.

This year, eight people from Gloucester and four other tour party members are attending the Anzac Day service at Bomana and remembering the sacrifice made by Private Taylor and two other soldiers who lost their life on the same battlefield.

They were Lt Laurie Powell and Private Clarrie Skelton, both from Coolangatta , who also died in the battle of Oivi-Gorari.

Ben Moide special guest at Kokoda Memorial

BY PETER SCOTT & CANDICE MARSHALL
ABC GOLD COAST

MOST AUSTRALIANS KNOW THE STORY of the Papua New Guinea’s 'Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels' in World War II.

It was the nickname given to the brave Papua New Guineans who carried injured Australian soldiers away from the frontline down the Kokoda Trail to safety.

But the Fuzzy Wuzzies were fighters too.

And for the last 70 years they've been fighting the same demons as any other veterans of the Kokoda Campaign.

Some are great survivors.

One of these fuzzy wuzzy Kokoda veterans, Ben Moide, is today on the Gold Coast as the special guest at this year's Rotary Kokoda Memorial Walk.

Remains of fallen WW2 commandos identified

ABC NEWS & SOURCES

AUSTRALIAN MILITARY INVESTIGATORS have successfully identified the remains of Australian servicemen killed in Papua New Guinea during World War II.

The bodies of two Australian soldiers buried in Papua New Guinea have been identified after almost 67 years.

The men have been identified as Lieutenant Scobell McFerran-Rogers [left] and Private John Whitworth from the Australian Z Special Unit, who were buried in unmarked graves at the Port Moresby War Cemetery at Bomana.

They had been part of a patrol sent to rescue downed US airmen in Sulawesi.

Z Special Unit (also known as Special Operations Executive) was a predominantly Australian group formed to operate behind Japanese lines as a specialist reconnaissance and sabotage force.

The unit carried out a total of 81 covert operations in the South West Pacific, with soldiers inserted by parachute or submarine to provide intelligence and conduct guerrilla warfare.

Although the unit was disbanded after the war, many of the training techniques and operational procedures remain a model for guerrilla operations today.

The Australian Army's Unrecovered War Casualties team spent several months researching military operations and deaths during the period to formally identify the men.

70th anniversary: Australians light up the Kokoda track

THE KOKODA TRACK FOUNDATION

AUSTRALIAN PHILANTHROPIC BODY, The Kokoda Track Foundation, is commemorating the 70th Anniversary of the World War II Kokoda campaign by providing 3,500 solar lights to the descendants of the legendary Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels.

The KTF aims to give a solar-powered LED light to every villager along the Kokoda Track, an area without access to electricity.

"This project is a game changer. It will dramatically improve people's lives in ways many Australians will find difficult to imagine," KTF chairman, Patrick Lindsay, said today.

"It will mean villages will no longer have to live by the dull glow of their camp fires after sundown. It will enable school students to read books and do their homework after dark for the first time in their lives. It will allow families to prepare and eat their dinner in safety and comfort."

The KTF has partnered with Brisbane-based social enterprise, FlexiWay Solar, to source the solar lights, which were developed in Australia and Argentina and made in China.

The lights are weatherproof, dust-proof and shock-proof and will last for eight hours on full power and 15 hours on half power on a full day’s solar charge.

Individual lights can be clicked together to illuminate larger dwellings, schoolrooms and community halls.

One of the heroes of the Kokoda campaign, Bede Tongs MM [pictured], a platoon commander in the 3rd Battalion during the battles in the area 70 years ago, delivered the first solar lights to Koko village, near Kokoda, this week.

Mr Tongs also presented graduation certificates to 56 teachers who qualified for an Elementary Teaching Certificate last week by completing a six-week course run by the KTF in Koko village.

"It was an honour to bring some light to the lives of the families of the men who helped us all those years ago," Mr Tongs said.

“I was overwhelmed by the welcome I received from both the villagers and the graduates," he added. "I felt I was representing my comrades, especially those who did not return home with us.

"I'm sure the new teachers will make a huge difference in improving the prospects of the coming generations of people from the area and the lights will change lives dramatically."

The KTF was founded in 2003 in recognition of the assistance given to Australian Diggers by the beloved Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels during WWII. It works in education, healthcare and capacity-building to help improve the lives of the people living in the Kokoda Catchment Area.

On this morning 70 years ago Rabaul fell to the Japanese

BY DAVID ELLERY *
The Canberra Times

THE FALL OF RABAUL ON JANUARY 23, 1942, will forever be linked with two tragedies, the massacres at Tol and Waitavalo that claimed at least 158 lives on February 4 that year, and the loss of 1053 soldiers and civilians aboard the Montevideo Maru on June 30.

A catastrophe that scarred the lives of thousands of Australian families, the fall of Rabaul has special meaning for - among others - Australia's ambassador to the United States Kim Beazley and cabinet minister and former Midnight Oil lead singer, Peter Garrett.

Garrett's grandfather, Tom, was a copra and cocoa planter on New Britain when the Japanese attacked. Beazley's uncle, Sydney Beazley, had been a builder and technical teacher at the Methodist mission. Both men were aboard the Montevideo Maru when she went down after being torpedoed by the USS Sturgeon, an American submarine, off the Philippines coast on June 30.

Only 18 people, all members of the Japanese crew, survived. The ship's commander, Captain Kasahara, made it ashore but was killed - along with most of his remaining crew - by guerrilla fighters.

To be marked by a special service at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance at 2.30pm tomorrow , the Rabaul anniversary is a reminder of the horrors an earlier generation of Australian soldiers and civilians faced with resolution and resilience. It is also the beginning of a succession of anniversaries and commemorations that mark 1942 as the most desperate year in Australia's history.

These include the fall of Singapore on February 15, the bombing of Darwin on February 19, the fall of Timor on February 23, the Battle of Sunda Strait in which the cruisers HMAS Perth and the USS Houston were lost on March 1, the air raid on Broome on March 3, the midget submarine attack on Sydney Harbour on May 31 and the shelling of Sydney and Newcastle on June 7.

Australian morale lifted for the first time when General Douglas MacArthur and his entourage arrived in Melbourne on March 21. The first real glimmer of hope appeared when, between May4 and 8, American and Australian naval forces turned back a Japanese invasion fleet on its way to Port Moresby in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

This was quickly followed by the American victory in the Battle of Midway from June 3 to 6 that ended Japanese naval supremacy in the Pacific just seven months after Pearl Harbour.

Then, on the night of July 21 and 22, the Japanese landed 3100 soldiers, engineers and press-ganged native carriers near Buna on Papua's north coast. The first of many thousands of Japanese soldiers and marines, their task was to cross the Owen Stanley Ranges and take Port Moresby from the landward side.

Thus began the epic battle for control of the Kokoda Track, a desperate struggle, marked by atrocities and fought across absolutely unforgiving mountainous jungle terrain. Kokoda was one of the Pacific war's great turning points; by mid-November Japanese land forces had been fought to a standstill for the first time.

The Americans became the masters of the game but the much-derided Australian militia had shown them the way. In 1941 Australia was responsible for two territories in what is now Papua New Guinea - Papua and New Guinea. The Territory of Papua, formerly British New Guinea, had been taken over by the Australian Government in 1906. Its capital was Port Moresby.

The Territory of New Guinea, the north-eastern part of the main island together with the Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, New Britain and Bougainville, was formerly German New Guinea. It passed to Australian control under a League of Nations mandate following the Treaty of Versailles. Rabaul was the capital.

Now largely abandoned since the catastrophic volcanic eruption in 1994, the old town nestled on the shore of Simpson Harbour. It was flanked by The Mother and The North Daughter, two of the seven volcanoes in the Rabaul caldera.

Its picture-postcard setting and tree-lined streets, repeatedly memorialised by Japanese amateur photographers and aspiring artists during the three-and-a-half year occupation, belied the dark events of 1942-45.

Pigeon DD43T139 - an on song hero of WW2

BY PETER KRANZ

THE DICKIN MEDAL was instituted in 1943 in the United Kingdom by Maria Dickin to honour the courage and dedication of animals in wartime.

It is a bronze medallion, bearing the words "For Gallantry" and "We Also Serve" within a laurel wreath, carried on a ribbon of striped green, dark brown and pale blue.

It’s awarded to animals that have displayed "conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty while serving or associated with any branch of the armed forces or civil defence units" and is commonly referred to as "the animals' Victoria Cross".

The medal was awarded 54 times between 1943 and 1949 to 32 pigeons, 18 dogs, three horses and a cat to acknowledge actions of gallantry or devotion during World War II.

Perhaps less well known is that one of the recipients of this award was a pigeon which served in Papua New Guinea - known only as Australian Pigeon DD43T139.

The notes on the award say:

This certificate accompanied the Dickin Medal awarded to Australian Army Blue Bar cock pigeon DD43T139 for gallantry as a result of a flight he undertook through a severe tropical storm near Madang, New Guinea, on 12 July 1945. At the time the bird was located at 10 Pigeon Section (Type B) attached to Detachment 55 Port Craft Company, Madang.

On that day he carried the following message, from a foundering boat to Madang, flying 40 miles in 50 minutes: “To: Detachment 55 Australian Port Craft Company, MADANG. From: AB 1402. Date: 12.7.45. Engine Failed. Wash on to beach at WADAU owing very heavy seas. Send help immediately. Am rapidly filling with sand. TOO: 0800 - Senders signature - HOLLAND Cpl. TO Liberation 0805 - No. of copies 2. TOR at Loft – 0855”.

As a result of the successful delivery of the message the boat, together with valuable stores, ammunition and equipment was salvaged.

The bird had previously completed 23 operational flights over a distance of 1,004 miles.

The citation for the award reads:

Awarded to Pigeon DD43T139 for gallantry carrying a message through a severe tropical storm thereby bringing help to an army boat with a vital cargo, in danger of foundering.

The bird had been donated to the army in 1943 as a patriotic gesture by a civilian pigeon fancier, George Adams of 11 Vigo Street, Footscray, Victoria, for use in signals units in New Guinea.

Mr Adams was not the bird's breeder but had approached members of pigeon clubs in Melbourne seeking the donation of birds for wartime duties.

After he approached the Yarraville Pigeon Club, one of its members, Gordon Whittle, whose family had bred and raced pigeons for many years, donated a number of birds. One of the pigeons he bred was DD43T139.

Source: Australian War Memorial

Australian trek group finds Kokoda remains

BY DANNY LANNEN

AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE DEPARTMENT experts will launch formal identification processes after a Geelong-based trekking group discovered human remains near Papua New Guinea's Kokoda Track.

A PNG porter from a trek group led by Mick O'Malley [pictured below] discovered a skull and thigh bone while fishing in a stream at a village known as 1900, near Menari.

Mr O'Malley said ammunition was also at the site, pointing to World War II battles between Australian and Japanese forces.

"It was a little bit of a shock really to be honest," the veteran of 15 Kokoda treks said. "It certainly puts the war into perspective. They're not just stories or fables, it's real life.

"When you see Bomana War Cemetery at the end of the track you get the sense this is actually real and this was the same feeling. This actually did happen."

He was unsure if the bones were those of a Digger or a Japanese soldier.

Mr O'Malley runs Australian Kokoda Tours and was leading a group from North Ballarat Football Club on a trek which finished last week.

The porter revealed his find privately to avoid causing alarm, the bones were stored at a village and Mr O'Malley alerted authorities on his return to Australia.

He believes the bones might have washed down the stream after torrential rain during previous days.

"You'd love to put a name to them, put some family at a little bit of ease that you'd found a brother, dad or son," Mr O'Malley said.

Grenades, ammunition and trenches are readily found in many remote locations beside the Kokoda Track, sites of intense jungle warfare as threadbare and vastly outnumbered Australian forces withstood and defeated invading Japanese forces.

Australian Defence Force experts have mounted an operation this month to find and neutralise unexploded and dangerous World War II munitions in areas on the Kokoda Track, including bombs from an American B-25 Mitchell bomber, mortars and grenades.

Source: Geelong Advertiser, 22 November       Spotter: Richard Jones

Battle of Brisbane: Before the Japs, fight each other

BY PETER KRANZ

I’VE JUST BEEN CHATTING to my old dad who was talking about railways in Australia in the 1940s.

He remembers passing through Wallangarra in Queensland on the way to Brisbane when the main railway line went up the New England route through NSW.

In those days when each State had its own rail system, Wallangarra was a change-of-gauge station on the border - it’s now just a ghost town - where 4'8" gauge met 3'6".

Dad remembers seeing hundreds of US and Aussie troops lined up waiting for trains to the north.  They were on their way to camp and train at Townsville and Atherton (where you can still see the remains of their barracks) before being shipped north to apua New Guinea.

That’s where the action was.

In those dark days, rail transport was safer than shipping due to the real threat of Japanese submarine attacks.

Dad also recalled the notorious 'Battle of Brisbane' in 1942 (much censored at the time) when US troops insulted Aussies troops leading to an all-in brawl on the streets of the Queensland capital.

Dad says a US soldier called out, "Thanks for the loan of your women" to some Aussies heading north to the battlefield.  This inflamed feelings already roused about unequal pay, and better treatment and conditions for the US soldiers.

There was a saying at the time that there were only three things wrong with the Yanks – they were overpaid, oversexed and over here!

"On the first night one Australian serviceman was killed, eight suffered gunshot wounds and several hundred were injured,” the record recalls.

“On the second night, eight American military police, one serviceman and four officers were hospitalised and countless others injured.

“The units involved in the riots were relocated out of Brisbane, the MPs strength was increased, the Australian canteen was closed and the American PX was relocated."

But it didn't end there.

"Following the Battle of Brisbane, resentment towards American troops led to several smaller riots in Townsville, Rockhampton and Mount Isa.

“In other states similar riots also followed.  There were the Melbourne riots of 1 December 1942 and the Battle of Bondi of 6 February 1943.

“These were followed by Battle of Perth in January 1944 and the Battle of Fremantle in April 1944, also stemming from resentment towards American troops."

Hopefully President Obama's just concluded visit has helped heal the memories of such nasty incidents.

Kokoda remembered even in deepest Victoria

BY CAROLYN WEBB & JAMES TAYLOR

THE KOKODA TRACK Memorial in Upper Ferntree Gully, Victoria, will get a $1 million upgrade ahead of celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the battle for the track.

New health and fitness steps will be built on Lyrebird Track so joggers can use an alternative to the popular walk, also known as The 1000 Steps.

The walk, from the picnic ground to One Tree Hill, pays tribute to the 2,000 Australians who died during the Kokoda campaign in Papua New Guinea during World War II.

The upgrade, announced on Thursday, will include information panels, shelters and seating for commemorations on days such as Anzac Day and Australia Day. The memorial will be completed in time for the 70th anniversary of Kokoda Day in August next year.

Pakenham resident Jack Duffy, who served in PNG with the 39th Battalion in 1942, said he cherished a 39th Battalion service held each February at The 1000 Steps.

The 89-year old does not mind joggers using the steps, but said the new track was a good idea because "you want to keep it as it is".

Source: Knox Weekly / Victoria, 9 November

Sanananda: the 'Melbourne Cup' of World War II

BY PETER KRANZ

IT SEEMS Aussies like their horse racing, no matter where they might be - including in the aftermath of the Gona and Buna campaigns of World War II Papua New Guinea.

The 19 July 1943 edition of Time magazine carried an article and photos about what was termed ‘The Soldiers Sweepstakes’.

This was an impromptu horse race organised by Australian and US troops at the makeshift Soputa race track.  The sweepstakes were called the Sanananda stakes.

Apparently the horses were British cavalry mounts captured by the Japanese in Malaya, then recaptured by Australian troops after the conquest of Buna.

An international field indeed.

And they were stayers; they had nowhere else to go.

The starting post was a discarded aircraft wing.  And at the finish line was a ramshackle betting shed where seven amateur bookies did a roaring trade in bets ranging from four shillings to ten pounds.

The total value of bets placed on the day was around two thousand pounds.

That was quite a lot of money considering the average pay for a digger at the time, which was about two shillings a day.

The State Library of Victoria has five photos of those Soputa races, as does the collection of personal photos takes by 1st Lt Richard Rogers of the USAAF, who also has pictures of Bob Hope, Gary Cooper, Phyllis Brooks and Una Merkel visiting the troops in New Guinea and giving a concert party.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/picture/result?l-decade=194&q=horses+race+new+guinea
http://www.ozatwar.com/usaaf/richardrogers.htm

War with Morobe gold miner over the Bulldog Track

BY LINDA SILMALIS

AN AUSTRALIAN gold mining company has been accused of contributing to the deaths of two Papua New Guineans by blocking access along the World War II Bulldog Track.

In his book, Dirty Money: The True Cost of Australia's Mineral Boom, author Matthew Benns claims armed guards have turned the Bulldog Track, 100km west of the Kokoda Track, into a no-go zone for locals.

He said people were angry they were being forced to take an alternative longer route that almost doubled the time of their trip through the mountains, and they blamed the mining consortium for the double tragedy.

Benns claims local resident Gloria Thompson, who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, died two weeks after taking the longer route to reach hospital in February this year.

In 2010, a woman having complications giving birth, died after being carried for seven days over the longer route.  Benns said she died 50 metres from a health care centre.

The track, also known as the Bulldog-Wau road, was built in 1943 by a gang of more than 4000 Australian army engineers, cuts across the Owen Stanley Range and is regarded as steeper, tougher and wetter than the Kokoda Track.

Since the end of its military use, locals from nearby villages had been using the Bulldog Track to access health care and supplies in the area's larger townships.

Locals have accused Australia's Newcrest Mining and South African outfit Hidden Valley of closing the track. The companies, operating as Morobe Mining Joint Venture, argued the track was re-routed in the interests of public safety.

Benns accuses the mining outfit of putting its interests ahead of the lives of locals.

"The track was an amazing feat of engineering led by chief engineer WJ Reinhold through some of the most rugged, mountainous landscapes of PNG and that an Australian engineer managed to pull it off was his enduring legacy," Benns told The Sunday Telegraph.

"Australian soldiers put their lives on the line to build this track. It was an astonishing feat. Until Newcrest closed it, it was an important trail for locals ... and was the shortest route across the mountains."

The joint venture's sustainability and external relations general manger David Wissink said talks were under way with locals and government officials about creating an additional alternative route.

Source: Sunday Telegraph, Sydney, 30 October
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/war-with-gold-mine-over-a-kokoda-track/story-fn6b3v4f-1226180476218

Japanese midget sub found in Rabaul harbour

BY ROD McGUIRK

A JAPANESE World War II submarine wreck was found partially buried in the seabed of Simpson harbour during a search for unexploded munitions, Australia's military said on Friday.

Australian and New Zealand warships found it 55 meters underwater while working in the area to clear explosives from the major WWII Japanese military base.

The wreck is partially buried in sand but upright. Australian navy historians had concluded from underwater images that the wreck is Japanese.

"The Royal Australian Navy will now work with Japanese authorities to assist in determining the wreck's identity," it said.

Gary Oakley, an Australian War Memorial curator and a former submariner, said it appeared to be a midget submarine crewed by one or two men.

"My best guess would be it's a Japanese midget submarine. It doesn't look big enough to be an ocean-going submarine," Oakley said after examining indistinct images of the wreck released by the Defence Department.

Japanese midget submarines were transported by ship or larger submarines and used covertly to infiltrate enemy targets including Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and Sydney Harbour.

Such a submarine could have been destroyed by an American air raid or naval bombardment or even scuttled by the Japanese toward the end of the war, Oakley said.

Source: Huffington Post, 28 October

New Kokoda battle: Are more memorials needed?

BY PAUL ASHENDEN

AUSTRALIAN KOKODA Track enthusiast, Charlie Lynn, plans to build significant memorials along the historic World War II route.

But the plan has come under fire from other Kokoda Track experts, who are concerned major monuments or other man-made developments would ruin the trail's ambience and stress the natural environment.

Network Kokoda founding chairman Mr Lynn hopes to establish a master plan for future development along the track, which attracts thousands of Australians each year.

He has raised $70,000 to engage Sydney-based designer Michael Pender to complete a survey of the track.

Mr Pender used a helicopter to visit the track last month and pegged out potential sites for memorials.

His ideas include a cultural interpretive centre at the start of the track to honour the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, who helped Australian soldiers during the war, and a monument at Brigade Hill, where Australian soldiers made a major stand against advancing Japanese forces during WWII.

"My belief has always been you need a master plan for the trail and any master plan needs to be sensitive to the environment and culture and properly respect the wartime history," Mr Lynn said. "But we do need to preserve the story of the Kokoda campaign."

Mr Lynn believes next year's 70th anniversary of the Kokoda campaign would be the ideal time for development and he will submit any plans to organisations such as the RSL and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The governments of Papua New Guinea and Australia unveiled a $700,000 memorial, designed by Mr Pender, at Isurava in 2002 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the campaign.

Bill James, author of Field Guide To The Kokoda Track, believes that one major memorial is enough to commemorate more than 2000 soldiers who died and thousands more who returned from fighting the Japanese from July 1942 to January 1943.

Mr James said the consensus at a forum of Kokoda Track authorities this year was that there was no need for any more major memorials and the Track should remain a wilderness experience.

"I am not keen to see more memorials on the track," Mr James said. "Interactive displays should be confined to places like the museum at Port Moresby. It is already under great environmental stress."

Photo: A helicopter circles before landing on Brigade Hill on the Kokoda Track which stretches across the highlands of Papua New Guinea [Paul Ashenden]

Source: The Adelaide Advertiser, 28 September
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/new-battle-for-kokoda-track/story-e6frea6u-1226148447074

Mystery of war: where exactly is Feature 1410?

BY BARBARA SHORT

 
OVER THE PAST YEAR I have been researching my mother’s family and recently I’ve been trying to work out where one of her cousins, Noel Park, won his Distinguished Service Order in 1945.

Back in 1975 one of the Sydney newspapers said the medal had been hard earned during the capture of Wewak Hill. I spent 1971-74 at Brandi High School near Wewak, and felt sure it must have been on Mission Hill, Wewak, as I had seen the old Japanese guns there. In fact I took a Japanese visitor there to see them and she took photos that later appeared in a Japanese newspaper.

But Noel’s son-in-law, Barry McGregor, who has been helping me research my book, felt that the newspaper report was wrong, which left me determined to find out exactly where Feature 1410 was located.

I was able to refer to a small book, Return to Wewak, that I had picked up during my stay at Wewak.  It had been compiled by Kerry Leen in 1970 for the 25th anniversary of the official cessation of hostilities between the Japanese and the Australians on 13 September 1945, at Cape Wom, Wewak.

Here’s what it said about Feature 1410:

A little south of Dagua near Tokoku Pass the Japanese had their main lines of communication to their inland forces- bitter fighting occurred in this spot, but the 2/3rd Battalion fought right into the headquarters of Lieut General Nakai, commanding the 20th Division, which was near Woginara Mission.

Flame throwers were used in the area for the first time. It was in fighting around Dagua that Lieut. Albert Chowne, MM was killed (25th March 1945) leading a charge on Feature 1410 afterwards known as "Chowne's Knoll". He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, for this action.

In the fighting for Tokoku Pass, Woginara Mission and Dagua itself, there was heavy artillery and Beaufort bombing support. Tokoko Pass was taken on the 3rd April by the 2/2nd Battalion.

Woginara Mission area where Lieut General Nakai had his HQ was taken by the 2/3rd Battalion the previous day, and Dagua had been taken by the 2/2nd Battalion on the 31st March. Supplies were brought from Aitape to But and preparations were made for the assault on Wewak. Divisional H.Q. was set up at But.

Isurava: They saved us; so we supported them

BY DANNY LANNEN

SERGEANT GEORGE Cops, pictured here in November 1942, stood in the rank of ragged bloody heroes listening to one of the great entreaties of Australia's World War II story.

His 39th Battalion was starved, wounded, decimated but defiant after horrific battle with Japanese forces at Isurava on Papua New Guinea's Kokoda Track.

They were young militia men who had stood firm and unbowed in the face of immense odds, relieved on the front line at a literal deathknock by better equipped men of the 2/14th Battalion in August, 1942.

"We were exhausted, utterly exhausted, completely exhausted," Mr Cops said.

Revered Colonel Ralph Honner told them that the ferocity of the battle meant every man would count and that they would need to return to help the boys of the 2/14th.

"The troops were quite happy about that, even though we were exhausted," Mr Cops said at his Ocean Grove home this week.  "They were really our saviours; it was only fair we stay and support them.

"There is no doubt had they not arrived we would not have survived the next day."

So the 39th returned to battle without flinching, such was the mettle and the comradeship that stood for so much when Australia's liberties were at stake.

The site of the four-day Battle of Isurava is sacred in Australian history and the major memorial on the Kokoda Track. Its four stone pillars bear the sentinel words courage, endurance, mateship and sacrifice.

Mr Cops, 89, the Beeac store keeper for 30 years, lived those ideals as a member of the 39th.  He used words including ‘horrendous’ and ‘horrible’ as he recalled Isurava. He spoke of wave after wave of Japanese soldiers and the brutal jungle conditions, but he also used the term epic heroism to describe the actions of the 2/14th and others.

Tension was constant, death was always near.

After the main battle, he was sitting beside the track when soldiers passed carrying his mother's cousin, Ernie Lindgenberg, mortally wounded in the stomach. He buried Ernie the next day down near Eora Creek.

Mr Cops baulked at suggestion the Kokoda campaign might have saved Australia when so many other battalions were at work across the Pacific.

"But had we not held out and the Japanese got to Port Moresby, they would have had the perfect base," he said.  "There is a school of thought that the Japanese never intended to land on Australia, but I don't believe that for one minute."

Mr Cops rose to the rank of regimental sergeant major but rated himself no hero.

He turned to the words carved in stone to express what the Kokoda campaign stood for to Australians - courage, endurance, mateship and sacrifice.

"I think the four pillars at Isurava cover it pretty well don't they?" he said

Source: Geelong Advertiser

Kokoda – a bastard of a place to fight a war

BY LT COL DARYL CAMPBELL

THESE DAYS it is considered a major feat just to walk the now peaceful [Kokoda] track, and we have celebrities and politicians grand-standing on TV about their great achievement in making the journey.

But they are not carrying a 70 lb pack and weapon, with poor, inadequate equipment and a dysfunctional supply and medical evacuation system reliant on unreliable air drops and native carriers – as magnificent as those native carriers usually were.  And, of course, no-one is shooting at them either!

But even now, the journey up the Kokoda Track is still measured in gruelling hours rather than distance and is now marked by the places where these men fought.  It remains enervatingly hot by day, bone chillingly cold at night, constantly rainy and enveloped by seemingly endless inhospitable jungle.

Today, we all acknowledge that just surviving the conditions on the track was a titanic struggle against the environment that imposed very great physical penalties on our men for every ignorant, thoughtless mistake made by the inexperienced staffs in Port Moresby and Australia.

There is no good place to fight a war, but New Guinea is indeed, a bastard of a place.   It is a place that our veterans still know well, for the hardships there are engraved in their minds and hearts.  They remember going up the “golden stairs” to Iori-Baiwa, slogging onto Menari, over Brigade Hill, through the searing heat in the kunai grass on the way to Efogi. 

They well remember climbing 3,000 ft in five miles up to Kagi, and clinging to saplings and roots on the way down to Templeton’s Crossing.  Then into Efogi village and two hours more to Isurava – where they were later to turn the tide against the Japanese in a major battle. 

They remember the ups and downs to Deniki and the first glimpse from up there of Kokoda down in the Yodda Valley below.  Gruelling, enervating, exhausting work – and that was just to get up there to fight the Japanese.

The battles these men fought are these days quite well recorded, and we now marvel at how incredulously well they fought with little support and under heart breaking privation - against a well trained and experienced, fanatical, and vastly numerically superior enemy who was previously undefeated.

These were perilous days. Malaya and Singapore had fallen, the Japanese advance through the Pacific seemed invincible, and Australia lay open to invasion. So Australians were uplifted in spirit and admiration when our brave diggers faced the overwhelming odds at Kokoda and acquitted themselves with such honour.

Kokoda then became, and remains today, a blazing symbol of national pride.

Extracts from a speech by Lieutenant Colonel Daryl Campbell at the 8 August Kokoda Day Commemoration on the Gold Coast

Photo: Lt-Col Daryl Campbell, along with his fellow Commonwealth commanding officers, salutes the fallen at the Kranji War Memorial in Singapore

'Grey ghost' is a relic of World War II

 

THIS WELL PRESERVED Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was originally bound for the UK under the terms of a lend-lease agreement before being assigned to operate in Papua New Guinea.

In 1943, under the command of 1st Lt. Raymond S. Dau of Arlington, Virginia, the bomber took off from Port Moresby to attack a Japanese convoy off Lae.

But anti-aircraft fire crippled the B-17, forcing the pilot to crash land near Black Cat Pass

The crew survived, but radio operator Robert Albright later died from his wounds.

The abandoned aircraft remains intact and has become a popular tourist attraction in the area, gaining the nickname the Grey Ghost.

Source: Urban Ghosts Media.   Photo: Alf Gillman

Solomons coastwatching memorial unveiled

BY MARTIN HADLOW

 

A MONUMENT to commemorate the bravery and loyalty of indigenous Coastwatchers and Scouts during World War II has been dedicated in the Solomon Islands capital, Honiara.

While the new memorial particularly recognises those who undertook coastwatching roles on Guadalcanal, New Georgia and elsewhere in Solomon Islands, the dedication ceremony also recognised the entire South-West Pacific network of Coastwatchers, including those who operated from Bougainville and other locations.

Speaking at the unveiling on the 7 August, former Solomon Islands Prime Minister and chairman of the Trust which constructed the statue, Sir Peter Kenilorea, noted that many of the major battles fought in the (then) British Solomon Islands Protectorate during the war were virtually unknown to the present generation of Solomon Islanders.

He also pointed out that the bravery of Solomon Islands Scouts had not been adequately recognised.

However, with the opening of the memorial, he said that names and places such as the Battle of Savo Island, Iron Bottom Sound, Mount Austen and Bloody Ridge would become better known to a new generation, which could be proud of the courageous and vital role played by Solomon Islands Scouts and Coastwatchers.

Royal Australian Navy Defence Advisor, Commander Geoff Turner, outlined the history of the Ferdinand network of teleradio operations established in the 1930s by Commander Eric Feldt of the RAN.

He mentioned the importance of the role played by the administration officers, planters, missionaries and others who reported from behind enemy lines as Japanese Imperial forces swept south in 1942 from their base in occupied Rabaul.

Without the help and protection of local people, Commander Turner noted that the mainly expatriate Coastwatchers would not have been able to survive.

The new monument, located near the Point Cruz wharves in Honiara, was designed and constructed locally.

It was officially opened by Solomon Islands governor-general, Sir Frank Kabui, in conjunction with the 69th anniversary of the landings made on Guadalcanal and Tulagi by US Marines on 7 August 1942.

Three surviving Solomon Islands Scouts [below] who fought in the campaigns were present at the ceremonies, while the US Marines were represented by officers from Guam and Hawaii.

 
Source: Photos and story by Martin Hadlow

Australian army investigates ‘Lost Battlefield’

A FIELD TEAM from the Australian Army’s Unrecovered War Casualties unit has started investigations at a remote site called the ‘Lost Battlefield’ at Eora Creek on the Kokoda Track.

World War II human remains had been found there by members of the Alola Village through the Lost Battlefield Trust.

The Army investigates all notifications relating to the discovery of human remains in areas where Australians of past conflicts may not have been recovered.

The field team - made up of a case manager, case researcher, scenes of crimes officer, archaeologist/bio-anthropologist, forensic dentist and public affairs officer - were inserted by helicopter due to the inaccessible terrain, before making the arduous trek to the site.

Using the skills of all team members, the remains were extracted over a three day period in conjunction with Augustine Wak from the National Museum of Papua New Guinea.

“It was a really exciting opportunity to use the skills of the specialist team members with quite diverse backgrounds, who formed a highly effective team in a short period of time.

“The success of the case is dependent on a range of specialists from within Army, across the services and outside of Army,” said Captain Andrew Bernie, the case researcher.

The team then returned to Port Moresby to continue to investigate the identity of the remains. The investigation includes taking DNA samples to identify ancestry, which can take up to six months.

It is not uncommon for remains to be excavated and put on display in villages along the track and handled by many individuals including trekkers, which makes DNA testing harder. Many of the sites can become contaminated and highly disturbed by individuals looking for artefacts.

 “At the conclusion of an investigation where remains are identified as being Australian, a dignified funeral service with full military honours will be offered to the family and conducted in accordance with their wishes,”  said Captain Bernie.

“Should the remains be identified as being those of a Japanese soldier, they will be respectfully handed over to the Japanese government.”

The field team has now returned to Australia after investigating a number of other sites in Oro Province.

Photo: http://www.thelostbattlefield.com.au

Source: Australian High Commission, Port Moresby

Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels honoured at Bomana

 
THE FUZZY WUZZY Angels contribution to supporting Australians in Papua New Guinea during World War II was honoured yesterday at a ceremony in Port Moresby.

The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Warren Snowdon, was represented at the ceremony, held at the Bomana War Cemetery, by Parliamentary Secretary for Defence, Senator David Feeney, who presented commemorative medallions to 13 recipients.

Senator Feeney said these medallions are just one way to show Australia’s gratitude to the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels.

“We are forever indebted to the kindness and the invaluable assistance they provided to Australians during the World War II.

“Many Australians survived the Kokoda campaign due to the strength and compassion of these brave people. Greater casualties and loss of life among the troops would have occurred if not for the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels,” he said.

Senator Feeney paid tribute to all Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels saying they represent the spirit of what we hold so dear in Australia – courage, tenacity and mateship.

Affectionately known as Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, an estimated 50,000 Papuan and New Guinean civilians supported Australia by carrying supplies, building bases, airfields and other wartime infrastructure, and evacuating the sick and the wounded from fighting zones.

They also helped Australians soldiers trek through the jungles of the Owen Stanley Ranges, including the Kokoda Track.

More than 600 Australians were killed and over 1,000 wounded during the Kokoda campaign.

Mr Snowdon said the Australian government was pleased that 34 Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels have been presented with the Commemorative Medallion since it was introduced in 2009.

Source: Department of Veterans’ Affairs

13 more Angel medals awarded tomorrow

THE SIXTH commemorative medallion ceremony to honour the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels will be held at Bomana War Cemetery tomorrow (Sunday).

The Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel Commemorative Medallion is a symbol of Australia’s appreciation for the civilians who helped Australian soldiers during the war. It has been presented since 2009 to eligible Papua New Guineans.

David Feeney, Australia’s Parliamentary Secretary for Defence, representing Veterans’ Affairs Minister Warren Snowdon, will present the medallions to 13 former Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels.  The ceremony will start at 9.30 am.

To receive a medallion, recipients must have assisted Australian servicemen or women in PNG during World War II and been civilians at the time of rendering assistance.

Widows and widowers of Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels are also eligible.

Source: Australian High Commission

PNG remembers its wartime dead

BY DONALD HOOK 

TODAY 23 JULY is Remembrance Day in Papua New Guinea.

At ceremonies throughout the country, tributes will be paid to PNG soldiers who died in World War II and in the secessionist conflict on Bougainville in the 1990s.

It is 69 years since the Papua Infantry Battalion fired on the invading Japanese after they landed near Gona on the Papuan north coast in July 1942.

The action was the first resistance the Japanese encountered in what was to become the Kokoda campaign.

In Canberra, there will be a church service at the PNG High Commission in Yarralumla followed by the screening of the film Angels of War and the sharing of wartime stories.

Kokoda crash prompts safety improvements

BY DONALD HOOK

EXTENSIVE SAFETY improvements have taken place in PNG aviation following investigations into the fatal aircraft accident near Kokoda two years ago.

The investigations were carried out by the PNG Accident Investigation Commission (AIC) with support from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

On 11 August 2009 a DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft with two pilots and 11 passengers was en route to Kokoda after taking off from Port Moresby.

The aircraft crashed on the eastern slope of the Kokoda Gap, about 5,780 feet above sea level in heavily timbered jungle 11 km south east of Kokoda airstrip.  It was destroyed on impact and there were no survivors.

As a result of the investigations, the AIC issued a safety recommendation in respect of the installation of cockpit voice recorders (CVR) in PNG aircraft with a seating capacity of 18 or more passengers.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority of PNG intends legislating to require the installation of CVRs in turbine powered aircraft with seating for more than nine passengers. It also has established a principal medical officer position.

Source: Flight Safety Australia

Archer leadership scholars visit Australia

 

THE KOKODA TRACK Foundation's Archer Leadership Scholars have just returned to PNG after spending two weeks with the Foundation in Sydney and Melbourne.

During their stay, the Archer Scholars completed an intensive, experiential leadership course where they developed the concepts, confidence, and connections to help them on their leadership journeys.

The students had one-on-one sessions with key government, business, and community leaders including Geoff Harris from Flight Centre, Richard Marles, Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, and Samah Hadid, the 2010 UN Youth Representative.

They also visited and completed work experience at a range of organisations including World Vision, Oxfam, OzHarvest, Opportunity International, the Lord Mayor's Office, Deloitte, GetUp!, Oaktree Foundation, WWF, Street University, Oasis, Hopestreet, and Spark.

Enormous thanks to The Trust Company (as trustees of the Fred P Archer Trust), PNG High Commissioner Charles Lepani, Aaron and Kaitlin Tait from the LEADERS Project, and all the individuals and organisations involved in the leadership exchange.

Source: Kokoda Track Foundation

Trekkers warned of Popondetta violence

BY LIAM FOX

AUSTRALIANS PLANNING to walk the Kokoda Track are being warned of potential danger after violence erupted in the town of Popondetta.

The murder of a young man in Popondetta last Friday sparked fighting that left another man dead.

Local reports say schools and businesses are closed and the situation remains tense.

Australia's Foreign Affairs Department says there is potential for more violence, and travelling on the road between Popondetta and Kokoda may be dangerous.

A small number of Australian tourists who travel to PNG to walk the Kokoda Track visit Popondetta.

The Kokoda Track Authority says there are no trekking groups in the area at present.

A spokesman says most trekkers avoid Popondetta altogether and fly in and out of the village of Kokoda.

Source: ABC News

Foundation furniture for schools, hospitals

THE KOKODA TRACK Foundation has successfully distributed 10 containers of school furniture and hospital beds to schools and health centres throughout the Oro Province.

The school furniture and hospital beds were donated by schools and hospitals in western Sydney and over five days were delivered to village schools and health centres – many of which were without furniture.

Working in partnership with Rotary, which coordinated the collection and shipping of the furniture, the Foundation delivered the furniture to 17 elementary and primary schools and five health centres and hospitals located along and in the catchment area of the Kokoda Track.

Our project partners shipped 80 classrooms of primary school furniture and 100 hospital beds. The mammoth task of distribution was also made possible with the help of trucks, manpower and fuel provided by Mike Jackson from Higaturu Oil Palms and Dale McCarthy, a local transport operator in Popondetta.

“We are so thrilled with the support that we have received from a range of organisations and businesses and it really demonstrates the power of community partnerships” said Foundation executive director, Dr Genevieve Nelson.

“This project would not have been possible without the support of all of our partners and it really is making an enormous difference in the lives of many people living in the Track catchment area.

“We have delivered hospital beds to health centres and hospitals were patients were previously sitting on the floor and similarly we have delivered furniture to schools where lessons were being conducted on dirt floors”.

In addition to the 10 containers shipped to Oro Bay, an eleventh was shipped to Port Moresby and distributed to a further four schools on the Koiari side of the Kokoda Track.

The Foundation is continuing to work with schools and hospitals in the Province to ensure that they remain open, are fully equipped, and are serving the local communities.

Source: Kokoda Track Foundation

Moresby: We held out against horrific odds

BY ANDRE AWADALLA

JACK BRENNAN [pictured] was only 17 when he joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1941. Within just a few short months he was in a fighter plane, tangling with the enemy in the skies over Port Moresby.

Now 87, Mr Brennan recalled how he had only a few hours of training flying Wirraway planes at airfields in NSW and Victoria when he was told to head north to Townsville to become part of a new squadron.

This outfit, the now legendary 75 Squadron, was to fly Kittyhawk fighter planes - an aircraft Mr Brennan and many of the others had never been in before. “It was like going from a rocking horse onto a steed that wanted to race,” Mr Brennan said.

Within only 17 days of forming, the squadron was deployed to defend Port Moresby - arriving in the middle of a Japanese bombing raid.

“For the next 46 days, we held out against horrific odds ... going up and down two to three times a day,” Mr Brennan said. Twelve Australian pilots were killed and 17 aircraft lost during the battles.

“They’d been flying for three years, the Japanese, and we had kids going up,” Mr Brennan said. “Then we started to get the hang of how to treat them. After the 46 days, we started to get on top and then they ceased flying into there because they didn’t have the men to do it.”

But this was not the end of the war for Mr Brennan, who was sent back to Australia to have a shattered hip repaired. Upon recovering, he and five other squadron pilots became part of the American 345 Pursuit Squadron, “island hopping” on their way to Japan.

Today, Mr Brennan volunteers every Wednesday at Point Cook’s RAAF Museum, passing on his knowledge and experiences to the younger generations. “They treat me like the prodigal son down there,” he said. “It’s a very tight brotherhood, the airforce.”

One of only two pilots still remaining from the original 75 Squadron, Mr Brennan said Anzac Day was particularly important to him. He said it was important that young people understood the sacrifices that made it possible for them “to be in such a wonderful land today”.

Source: Hobsons Bay Leader, Melbourne

Vietnam vet retraces dad's Kokoda ordeal

BY NIKOLAOS STAVROU

TO SAY THAT Vietnam War veteran Eric Easterbrook [pictured] will soon be following in his father’s foot steps may sound cliched, but it’s actually true.

In June the retired airman, from Emu Plains, will trek the Kokoda Trail where his father Owen was a bren gunner as part of the 2/3rd Battalion in World War II.

“They went through a lot worse than we ever did,” Mr Easterbrook said. ” I know when he was going over the Kokoda Trail the bren gun was 15kg, he would have been carrying ammunition, a pack with some rations and protective gear. I’ll be walking the Kokoda Trail with just a 5kg pack.

“In the time that they were going across I can imagine the weather conditions being absolutely horrific, the Japanese firing at them - hot lead whistling around their ears; and imagine the fear in them if the Japanese took them prisoner because by that stage, it was known what the Japanese were doing through Malaysia and the other islands.”

Mr Easterbrook’s father also served in the Middle East during World War II, while five uncles served in the navy, army and air force - some of them in Tobruk.

His own foray into the defence force, though, did not come out of a desire to emulate his father or uncles. “I was always interested in aircraft and I wanted to fly,” he said. “One of my uncles served in the air force in the European campaign. He was a wireless operator gunner and had been shot at a couple of times.

“Because I had left school early I didn’t have the education qualifications to go into flying ... so I joined up as an apprentice and became an armament fitter, went through as a trooper and then was commissioned in later years.”

From November 1970 to November 1971 he was an armament fitter with 9th squadron, which provided insertion, evacuation and gun ship support to the ground forces in Vietnam.

He said while he was proud to have served his country and proud of his father and uncles he was “happy neither of my sons are involved. If you’ve ever been to war you don’t want your family to go,” he said.

Source: Penrith Press, Sydney

Safety pins and faith saved Kokoda veteran

BY PAUL DOBBYN

NINETY-YEAR-OLD Kokoda Trail veteran Colin Richardson of St Lucia in Brisbane never got to thank the army chaplain who anointed him as he lay bleeding from a massive chest wound partly held together with safety pins.

But Mr Richardson [pictured] believes he had an extraordinary communication, one which "made my neck hairs stand up", from the priest - Monsignor James Lynch - when he visited his grave in the priests' section of Nudgee Cemetery about 45 years later.

On 17 October 1942, Colin Richardson, then a lieutenant with the Third Infantry Battalion, was shot with a Japanese dum-dum bullet during a seesawing and bloody battle around Templeton's Crossing in the Owen Stanley Ranges and left to die.

The injury, close to his heart, shattered many of his ribs and destroyed his left lung. He would eventually discover during a "fortuitous meeting" at an army reunion many years later that he owed his life to Dr Geoff ‘Pa’ Mutton who he would eventually track down in Orange NSW.

After that meeting in the early 1990s, Dr Mutton was moved to say: "There's only two people who have come back to life, Jesus Christ and Colin Richardson".

Meanwhile Mr Richardson, having lost the use of one lung as a result of the injury, would never again have the endurance to walk the Kokoda Trail, such a central and nearly fatal part of his young life.

However, the determined veteran became the driving force behind a program at his old college - the University of Sydney's St Paul's - to encourage young men to walk the trail and connect to the sacrifice of their forebears.

When The Catholic Leader visited him, Mr Richardson opened his remarkable story by saying "I never did get to meet Fr Lynch because I was 'dead' by the time he arrived". The priest had arrived with Dr Mutton from the nearby 2/33rd to offer assistance, having been alerted by men from the battalion that their officer was badly wounded.

The veteran doesn't know to this day what had become of the doctor and padre from his own battalion. "Things were pretty sticky," he said. "Maybe they had been lost in action. The doctor and priest didn't arrive until six hours after I'd been hit - by then I didn't have a pulse, probably because I'd lost so much blood."

Then 22-year-old Lieutenant Richardson had a wound the size of a fist in his chest and a bigger one in his back. His mates had given him up for dead.

Mr Richardson has a letter he received from Dr Mutton in 1995 which fleshes out the story. The doctor wrote: "You had a bloody great hole in your chest. I found some cat gut in the bottom of my haversack and closed the hole.

“I then rolled you over and to my horror found a bigger bloody hole coming out of your back. I had run out of gut! I found a few safety pins in my haversack and was successful in closing the wound."

After the makeshift operation, Mr Richardson was carried by Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels for two days to Myola, then a forward supply depot along the Kokoda Trail back to Port Moresby.

Next stop was Sydney's Concord Hospital and a long and painful rehabilitation, dealing with drainage tubes from the lung "which had been shredded by the bullet". It would take Mr Richardson until 1946 to completely recover from the wound.

He studied at St Paul's College from 1944 to 1948 to become a chemical engineer and resettled in Brisbane in 1951, having been advised to do so due to the detrimental impact of the southern smog and cold on his damaged lung.

It was at a reunion of his old battalion in the early 1990s that Mr Richardson got the lead which would help him track down the doctor who saved his life. "I went on a search for the doctor and finally found him through a surgeon friend in Sydney. Geoff and I spent three days together reminiscing about our war experiences.

"Our conversation came to the priest. I said when I find out what happened to Fr Jim Lynch I'll let you know. I discovered Fr Lynch had died and was buried in a grave at Nudgee."

Mr Richardson, with one of his wife's friends, decided to visit the priests' section of the cemetery and find the monsignor's grave "to thank him for having anointed me in my hour of need".

"It didn't take me long to find the grave and I decided to photograph it to send Dr Mutton," he said. "It was a beautiful sunny day although there was a slight shadow. I looked up and noticed a very small blackish cloud directly above. I took a couple of pictures.

"I then said: 'Well, Jim, I just want to say thank you and if you hear me can you give me a sign?' Well, bless my soul, at this precise moment the little dark cloud dropped a downpour around us - probably in a circle of fifteen metres or so. The hairs on both our necks stood up - it was the first time in my life I'd been scared stiff.

"We were so stunned at this quick response to my request, neither of us could say anything. When we reached the car parked nearby it was completely dry."

Mr Richardson finished his reminiscences by outlining the success of his project to drive the development of a program to encourage young men at St Paul's, his old college to walk the Kokoda Trail.

"My motivation was to help them towards manhood by appreciating the courage, endurance, mateship and sacrifice that Australian soldiers underwent on this trail so their descendants could be free.

"These are the tenets that we as Australians should always strive to live by. In fact they are the ideals which have kept me going through what's been a pretty tough life at times."

Source: The Catholic Leader

We knew what we had to do, and did it

BY EMMA PARTRIDGE

BILL Goggins of Bexley joined the army in 1940 after he and a friend tried unsuccessfully to join the police.

"We went to Redfern to join the police but they told us we were too skinny, so we walked up to Victoria Barracks and joined the 9th Field Brigade," Mr Goggins [pictured] said with a chuckle.

The Kogarah RSL vice-president said he was glad he did because he went on a journey that changed his life. Mr Goggins was 19 when he was asked to join the Royal Australian Air Force 75 Squadron because of his mechanical background.

He sailed from Townsville on a Dutch ship and arrived at Milne Bay in August 1942 to help maintain aircraft, including Kitty Hawks. He was there for the battle of Milne Bay — the first time the Allied troops defeated the Japanese in the Pacific campaign.

"There was no feeling of going back, we just knew what we had to do and that's what we did," Mr Goggins said.

He recalls his first or second night sleeping in a tent with two others and hearing bombs drop from planes flying at about 15,000 feet. He yelled at his mates to get into a trench. "They said 'don't be so bloody silly, the trenches are full of snakes'," he said. "So we just stayed there. I couldn't believe it."

He said he missed his mother's cooking and soon tired of eating bully beef and beans. Soldiers passed time by playing mouth organs and cards or talking. "There was no entertainment, we were camped out in the middle of a coconut plantation," he said.

After a year in PNG, he returned to Richmond air base near Sydney and then sailed to England. The war ended shortly after. "I was one of the lucky ones," he said. After marrying, he and his wife, Toni, moved to PNG for 10 years to work.

Mr Goggins said this Anzac Day he would remember his mates and father, who served in World War I. "I think I would be the same as most people. You remember what happened and then you say, 'let's get on with it' and have a beer," Mr Goggins said.

Source: St George and Sutherland Shire Leader, Sydney

Police sergeant will get the track pumping

BY ELIZABETH ALLEN

RUGBY BALLS AND bike pumps may not be what many people consider to be essential supplies for an eight-day trek in tough terrain.

But for Broadmeadows Police Senior Sergeant George Buchhorn [pictured], it’s precious cargo to bring some help and happiness to villages along the Kokoda Track.

Sen-Sgt Buchhorn will tackle the track in July to deliver a specialised backpack worth $700, bought with the help of the Keilor East RSL, which he hopes to fill with medical supplies and deliver to health nurse, Jerry Dimuda, whom he met on his first visit to the Kokoda Track last year.

Mr Dimuda visits villages to immunise children, perform medical examinations, record illnesses and respond to medical emergencies, but struggled with equipment and supplies, sometimes using a wheelbarrow to transport them to villages.

On his visit last August, Sen-Sgt Buchhorn took rugby balls and bike pumps for residents of the villages. “They were pretty well received,” he said. “There are some pretty sports-mad villages there.”

Sen-Sgt Buchhorn, who hopes to become a guide on treks of the Kokoda Track, said he felt people were starting to understand the significance of the track in Australia’s history during the World War II campaign.

Source: Hume Leader, Melbourne

Kokoda trekker numbers look good for 2011

BY DAN JORDAN

BOOKINGS FOR THE 2011 Kokoda trekking season are looking strong and research shows that people are having positive experiences while taking on the track.

Independent research conducted for the joint PNG-Australian government Kokoda initiative has shown that most trekkers felt the experience exceeded their expectations. Tour operators reported strong bookings ahead of Anzac Day.

Vera Huntink, sales and marketing manager for the PNG Tourism and Promotion Authority in Australia and New Zealand said the increase in visitor numbers is a result of improvements on the track.

"Over the last two years significant work has gone into raising standards along the track, encouraging community engagement and giving back to communities. This has improved trekker safety and experiences along the track.

“Research shows that word of mouth has the biggest impact on trekker numbers, so when trekkers are having goods experiences and the news is positive, this translates directly into increased bookings," she said.

Major improvements on the track have been conducted by the Kokoda Track Authority since 2008, with the support of the Australian and PNG governments.

Source: The West Australian

The epic bonding trek that is Kokoda

ABOUT HALFWAY UP the long climb out of the Goldie River valley, a steep hillside devoid of jungle shade, the unexpectedly gruelling finale to a southwards journey on the Kokoda Track, a butterfly kept coming back to settle on my arm.

It was a lustrous thing about eight centimetres across, with velvety wings of purple and brown, one of the hundreds of wonderful species found in Papua New Guinea. It seemed a blessing and farewell.

Up at the top, at the road terminus known as Owens Corner, our group of trekkers turned to look back and pose for photos under the steel arches that frame the view, a memorial with plaques attached listing the Australian and American units that fought over the track in 1942 and then on to the killing grounds of Buna and Gona on Papua's north coast, where the Japanese remnants had dug in for a last stand.

Behind, the Owen Stanley Range receded: fold upon fold of deep green hill and mountain, with not a sign of human settlement. The first clouds of the afternoon bank-up were still wispy; later they'd be a lowering, inky mass. We had walked through this range, trudged up its endless slopes, camped in its clearings eight nights, bathed in its rushing streams, trod its paths for 96 kilometres.

Read the full article here

Source: ‘The Essay: Pathways to Papua’ by Hamish McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 April 2011

Angels will march in Sydney & Canberra

BY LAURA OSTI

WEARING TRADITIONAL dress he made himself, coordinator of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels in the Oro Province, Benjamin Ijumi [pictured], will march in Canberra tomorrow as a representative of the Angels. ''I am honoured to march,'' he said.

His colleagues Frederick Soka and Father Hannington Dabiyaba will march in Sydney.

Mr Soka and fellow carriers were recognised by the Australian government last July when they were presented with the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels commemorative medallion.

He and his fellow stretcher-bearer and comrade, Fr Dabiyaba, a retired Anglican priest, ''enlisted'' as carriers at the ages of just 12 and 13.

Not only did they guide and carry wounded troops, they assisted the Australians in other ways.

''We cut all of the sticks to put up the tents,'' Father Dabiyaba said. ''We would fetch coconuts to quench their thirst and when they went out for exercises, we would carry their arms.''

As well as providing manual labour, Father Dabiyaba informed the allied troops of Japanese movements.

Source: The Canberra Times

Crawl through Kokoda mud? Not at my age!

BY BENJAMIN MILLAR

WORLD WAR II veteran John Jennings, 90, always a keen fisherman, recalls a time when the lack of a rod didn't deter him.

In PNG with the 39th Battalion, and tired of the miserable army rations, he and his mates adopted a noisy remedy. "We would toss grenades out into the water where they would sink and explode," he says.

"We'd swim out and grab the stunned fish and, bingo, you'd have a good feed for a change."

"I joined the Light Horse before the war, in 1938. I got sick of where I was working and I saw a man in uniform on a horse in town one day, and I thought, that's the way for me. I put my age up as I was only 17."

Mr Jennings went on to join the 39th Battalion, which was heavily involved in the Kokoda campaign. "Half the time you were crawling or up to your waist in mud. I wouldn't want to do it today - not at my age!"

Today, Mr Jennings remembers his service with mixed feelings. He grew to be great mates with his fellow soldiers, who have all since died. He feels he experienced things that nobody should have to go through.

Mr Jennings believes it's important younger people realise the sacrifices of previous generations. "Anzac Day is when I think of all the ones I was with who are not with me any more."

The great-grandfather will not only honour Anzac Day next Monday but also his wedding anniversary and 91st birthday. "It's really good, I can celebrate with a beer in each hand!"

Source: Brimbank and North West Weekly, Melbourne

A rose for his grandfather’s grave

BY LAURA TRIESTE

EMOTION HAS spurred Andrew McDougall to take on the challenge of the Kokoda Track.

‘‘My grandfather fought in the war in New Guinea,’’ the Kellyville resident said. ‘‘He fought in the Middle East and then he went to Kokoda and was killed there. He was 25.’‘

Mr McDougall left for PNG with a group of ten friends and has spent eight days walking the track. His journey will finish with a dawn stand-to at Bomana tomorrow.

He is the first member of his family to visit the grave of his grandfather, Herbert Arthur Warne [pictured].

His grandmother, Esma Stuart, was very happy when she heard he would be making the trip. “She’s really proud and she’s given me a rose to put on the grave,” Mr McDougall said.

Source: Hills Shire Times, Sydney

Teacher on track for a testing Kokoda lesson

BY SARAH O'CONNOR

A NOBLE PARK teacher has overcome her hatred of camping, spiders and leeches – by walking the Kokoda Track with a group of Dandenong residents.

Jo Cucchiara [pictured with students], assistant principal at Noble Park Secondary College, wants to discover all she can about Australia's World War II campaign in Kokoda.

This includes writing a blog, taking photos and recording film footage of the trek. When she returns, Ms Cucciara will share the history of Kokoda with her students by incorporating it into the school's curriculum.

“There's room for improvement in terms of bringing Kokoda to the forefront of the Australian history curriculum,” Ms Cucchiara said.

She has been told to expect about 25 centimetres of rain each day on the Track. "We're going in the wet season because we want it to be the same as what the 39th Battalion went through," she said.

"I want to show the students the commitment and sacrifice and those values the soldiers had."

Ms Cucchiara said she was not known for her love of the outdoors. "I've never slept in a sleeping bag. I have a fear of leeches and spiders," she said.

But Ms Cucchiara has trained rigorously for up to 20 hours each week. She has already dealt with another anxiety, even before leaving the country. "I've already overcome my fear of needles - I think I've had about five already."

Source: Greater Dandenong Weekly, Melbourne

Jack was a driving force in the war effort

BY TIM WILLIAMS

JACK BOWMAN’S father owned a bus company, so the army thought the 19-year old would make a good driver.

He reported for training at Woodside on Christmas Day 1941 and, just days later, left Adelaide for PNG to spend two years trucking artillery and supplies around Port Moresby Harbour with the 13th Field Regiment.

The regiment’s guns were positioned about 15 km inland in preparation for a Japanese land invasion. “If they came ashore, we would have had to mow them down,” Mr Bowman says.

It never came to that after the victory of Allied forces in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1943, which played out before his eyes and was the only time he was truly frightened. “That was the turning point in the war as far as I’m concerned.”

Mr Bowman, now 87, says troops became blase about the endless Japanese air raids of 60 or 70 bombers swooping on the harbour each day. “When you’re there it doesn’t worry you. You’ve got plenty of mates around you.”

After the war Mr Bowman joined his father and brother driving for Bowman’s Bus Company taking over the business in 1950 and expanding it to a fleet of 44 buses.

He treasures Anzac Day for the annual reunion of the 13th Field Regiment. “Only about 50 of the 750 are left. A lot are from the Tea Tree Gully area and Norwood and so on. “You never forget their friendship.”

Source: Leader Messenger, Salisbury, South Australia

Nothing good comes from war, says veteran

BY ANNA PRYTZ

WORLD WAR II VETERAN Dick Goold [pictured] feels that talking about his harrowing posting to PNG is difficult but necessary.

Readying himself for tomorrow’s Anzac Day ceremonies, Mr Goold, 89, said he speaks about his devastating wartime experiences to ensure future generations are aware of war’s brutal reality.

“For a lot of the fellas, it’s very hard to talk about,” he said. “Some friends of mine were Rats of Tobruk and they can’t talk about it without getting emotional.

“But you do need people to know that nothing good comes from war. There have been so many of them over the years and nobody seems to have learned that yet.”

After enlisting in the Royal Australian Air Force as a mechanic, Mr Goold said he was posted to Port Moresby when he was 19. He remembers vividly the rough and unhygienic living conditions, constant bombings, fear and uncertainty as well as the mateship of fellow troops.

“It stays with you, that,” Mr Goold said. “I was there about nine months and that was more than enough for me. Some of those things you never forget.”

A member of Templestowe RSL since 1962, Mr Goold has been prominent in the club’s Anzac Day services. I’m always there and I do the raising of the flag,” Mr Goold said. “It’s good to keep the spirit going.”

Source: Manningham Leader, Melbourne

Kokoda memorial walk on the Gold Coast

BY MATTHEW KILLORAN

SUPPORTED BY A walking frame, Kokoda veteran Jim Stillman, 90, had pride in his eyes as he watched dozens of people march past in memory of an Australian legend.

Mr Stillman, who served in the 39th Battalion at Kokoda, was the guest at Rotary Kokoda Memorial Walk on Queensland’s Gold Coast on Sunday.

He said he was sad that, for the first time, he was the only veteran of the Kokoda campaign at the memorial walk, but was encouraged by the number of young people taking part in the event.

''It's getting very good, it's getting better every year,'' said Mr Stillman.

''I think it's quite good the Gold Coast has several different events which honour the Kokoda legend and veterans,'' said Geoff Stillman, Jim's son, who walked the full 26 km.

Event organiser George Friend said more than 100 people participated in the memorial walk, raising more than $4,000.

The money will go to the Kokoda Memorial Hospital, Legacy and the Premier's Disaster Relief Appeal.

The Kokoda Memorial Walk is held each year on the Sunday before Anzac Day.

Photo: Gold Coast-Tweed Pipes and Drums on the Kokoda memorial walk

Source: Gold Coast Bulletin

Kokoda trekking season opens for 2011

PNG TOURISM officially launched the 2011 Kokoda trekking season last week at The Mint in Sydney.

Guests were captivated by Bill James, Director of the Lost Battlefield Trust and writer of Field Guide to the Kokoda Track, as he shared his knowledge of the area and reconfirmed the discovery of the lost battlefield where a body has been found and is believed to be one of the five Australians unrecovered.

It is anticipated that they will begin opening parts of the lost battlefield over the next 12 months, allowing visitors to experience first-hand what it was like 68 years ago. Weapon pits, war debris, expended ordinance, machine guns, helmets and much more are still on the ground as it was when the Australians attacked this region.

Major improvements have been undertaken and further scheduled upgrades include a new airport and infrastructure, a joint initiative between the Australian and PNG governments to protect and encourage tourism.

Rod Hillman Chief Executive of the Kokoda Track Authority, advised that emergency medicine doctors are doing research into hydration to ensure safety for visitors.

Porters and guides are being trained in basic first aid and wilderness first aid so they can support travellers and help educate local villagers.

Research has shown that word of mouth is the means to the increase of trekkers visiting PNG. Over 17,000 Australians visit each year.

“Trekkers are having good experiences and this translates directly to increased bookings,” said Vera Huntink sales and marketing manager for PNG Tourism in Australia and New Zealand.

“Over the last two years significant work has gone into raising standards along the track, encouraging community engagement and giving back to communities.

Track discovery may be Australian digger

BY CAROLINE MARCUS

RESEARCHERS SURVEYING a lost battlefield on the famed Kokoda Track may have found the body of a missing Australian Digger after uncovering a buried boot [pictured].

The brown left boot, corresponding to footwear worn by Australian soldiers, was discovered with human remains during an archaeological survey at the site of the last Kokoda battle of 1942, which remained hidden until it was found last year.

Known as the Lost Battlefield, the jungle terrain at Eora Creek, near Alola in PNG, was where Australian soldiers of the 16th Brigade, 2nd AIF, engaged elements of the Japanese army's 144th Infantry Regiment in late November 1942.

Over eight days, 79 Australians and about 69 Japanese were killed. The bodies of five Australians are still missing.

During the survey, two sets of human remains were discovered as well as one and two-man gun pits corresponding to Japanese defensive positions. Although the nationality of the dead is yet to be confirmed, the team believes one body could be that of an Australian because of the boot and other items found.

The Lost Battlefield Trust, which commissioned the survey, yesterday released a report into the findings. The trust's chairman, David Moffatt, said the findings were of national significance and it was "incredibly humbling" to have the opportunity to identify and recover a soldier almost 70 years after the battle.

"It is not confirmed that it is Australian but the weight of evidence suggests it is," Mr Moffatt said yesterday. "It would be wonderful to recover a Digger."

Defence Department staff will travel to the site to confirm the nationality of the soldier, and may use DNA testing. If Australian, he will be reburied at the Bomana War Cemetery.

Source: Brisbane Sunday Mail

Kokoda track is Australia’s major shrine

BY JEFF KENNETT

AS WE APPROACH Anzac Day on 25April, the country starts to focus again on the theatres of war that have taken young Australian men and women overseas to be involved in conflicts that have ensured Australia's independence.

In World War II, for the first time, Australia experienced an opposing force in and around our own territory.

The biggest threat to Australia was undoubtedly the Japanese landing in PNG - at that time Australian territory - and their attempt to secure PNG as a base from which to continue their advance south.

The Kokoda Track was crucial to the Japanese advance. Up to 13,000 Japanese army and naval personnel were deployed in a campaign that was to last only six months, concluding in the defeat of the Japanese in the third week of January 1943, when they were driven from the same beaches from which they launched their campaign only months earlier.

But during those six months, one of the most heroic battles was staged by a grossly outnumbered, and in the main untrained, Australian force, in the most difficult terrain and weather conditions imaginable.

As much as we remember Gallipoli, it is perhaps the Kokoda campaign that has been the most defining military conflict involving Australian troops, given the grave potential threat to mainland Australia.

Since that terrible conflict, PNG gained its independence from Australia on 16 September 1975. Australia continues to be a major benefactor to its development. But the country is young, and the contrasts are extreme between the wealth of a few and the poverty of many. Sadly, corruption is rife and crime, particularly in Port Moresby, is frightening.

On the other hand the mineral wealth within PNG has in part been identified and is now starting to be extracted. It will bring enormous wealth and potential to the country, if the corruption that exists at the highest levels does not kill the golden goose.

You really get the feeling that PNG is at the crossroads and unless careful might degenerate into the worst of Third World countries. They need to recognise their shortcomings and introduce reforms themselves and/or seek help from those with experiences and skills they do not possess.

But to me the real wonderment of PNG still remains the Kokoda Track.

Source: Extracts from a story in the Melbourne Herald-Sun.   Jeff Kennett is a former premier of Victoria.   Spotter: Peter Kranz

Kokoda Track Foundation expands presence

BY PATRICK LINDSAY

WE WERE DEEPLY disappointed at recent ill-informed remarks made by ‘Disappointed Track Dweller’ in the Post-Courier about the use of the Kokoda Track Foundation’s funds and our decision to expand our programs to benefit the wider PNG community.

We normally don’t respond to people who do not give their name with their comments but these anonymous claims are so misguided we must set the record straight.

First, the writer has confused the Kokoda Track Foundation with the Kokoda Track Authority.

The Kokoda Track Foundation is an Australian-based not-for-profit organisation that has been helping communities along the Kokoda Track since 2003. All funding for our projects comes from donations raised entirely from the Australian public: individuals, corporations, trek operators, and philanthropists who all want to lend a hand to our nearest neighbour. We don’t receive any funds from trekking fees.

On the other hand, the Kokoda Track Authority is a PNG local government Special Purpose Authority, charged with administering trekking operations along the Track. Its funding comes from fees paid by trekkers.

Second, the writer has failed to do his homework.

This year our Foundation will have 300 students on scholarships, all of whom come from families from the Kokoda Track catchment area. We award these primary, secondary and tertiary scholarships on the basis of the following strict selection criteria: (1) academic merit; (2) gender equality; (3) family need; and (4) residence in the Koiari/Orokaiva catchment area.

The Foundation also supports 35 elementary, primary, and secondary schools with textbooks, library books and stationary. We are currently delivering classroom furniture to many of these schools, as well as hospital beds to aid posts, health centres and hospitals. We fund teacher and health worker training, provide medicines to aid posts and hospitals and we underwrote the Northern Province Seed Restoration Program in response to Cyclone Guba. All of these schools and activities are in the Kokoda catchment area.

Late last year our Foundation won a grant from The Trust Company, a leading Australian trustee company administering the estate of the late Fred P. Archer, that allowed us to establish the Archer Leadership Scholars Program, our first program available to students throughout PNG.

Under the scholarships, each year six outstanding students in their final year of tertiary studies will receive a year-long program of intensive leadership and mentoring activities in PNG and Australia. The program aims to develop leadership skills and abilities through mentoring, community development placements, work experience, tuition and boarding support, resource support, and an exchange program to Australia.

Fred Archer was an Australian who spent 54 years in PNG, a planter, businessman, WWII Coast Watcher and philanthropist. It was his dream to help PNG find its next generation of leaders. Our Foundation has always shared this goal.

As our Foundation grows, we look to expand our programs throughout the Track catchment area and to other needy communities across the country so we can make real differences in the lives of Papua New Guineans.

Patrick Lindsay is Chairman of the Kokoda Track Foundation

The Kokoda Track Foundation welcomes enquiries about any of its programs in education, health, community development, and microbusiness in PNG. Please contact the Foundation’s executive director, Dr Genevieve Nelson on +61 2 9252 2992 or gen.nelson@kokodatrackfoundation.org

Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels honoured at Kokoda

THE SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels during World War II was acknowledged at a medallion ceremony in Kokoda yesterday.

Australia’s High Commissioner to PNG, Ian Kemish, presented commemorative medallions to six recipients.

In a statement, Veterans’ Affairs Minister, Warren Snowdon, said Australians will be forever indebted to the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels.

“They provided invaluable assistance to Australians during the Second World War — carrying supplies, contributing to the building of bases, airfields and other wartime infrastructure and, most notably, evacuating the sick and wounded through some of the most hostile terrain ever encountered in modern warfare,” Mr Snowdon said.

Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels Day was established in 2009 and Mr Snowdon said this year’s inaugural ceremony provided an opportunity to mark the involvement of a special group of people who continue to be respected and honoured.

The medallion ceremony was held on 3 November, the day on which the Australian flag was raised above a reoccupied Kokoda village after months of fighting along the Kokoda Track.

The Kokoda campaign began when Australians of the 39th Militia Battalion and members of the Papuan Infantry Battalion encountered Japanese troops near Awala on 23 July 1942. For the next three months the Australians conducted a fighting withdrawal to their last line of defence on Imita Ridge near Port Moresby.

At this point the Australians, now bolstered with reinforcements, rallied and after a number of fierce engagements they were able to push the Japanese back along the track.

The commemorative medallion was announced in April last year and features the famous image of a blinded and barefoot Private George Whittington being helped by Raphael Oimbari. The photograph was taken on Christmas Day 1942 near Buna on the PNG north coast.

Medallions are available to surviving Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels and the widows of Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, and the Australian Government is still seeking to ensure all surviving Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels are honoured.

Ex-Kiap and war historian Ross Wilkinson writes: “It is good that, whilst we tend to associate "the fuzzy wuzzies" with Kokoda, this appears to be recognising the help of the population in a broader sense.

“The PNG people provided far more wide-ranging assistance to allied troops in PNG during the war. Villagers recruited by ANGAU received remuneration for their assistance and a small number of the population received individual honours or recognition of a tangible kind. 

“But many assisted in a totally voluntary way, whether it was guiding lost soldiers and airmen back to their own lines or guiding Coastwatchers to new locations from which to carry out activities.

"Most of the people we readily identify as 'fuzzy wuzzies' were contracted workers through ANGAU.  The ones who deserve recognition were those like the villagers of New Britain who assisted the remnants of Lark Force escape along the coast to be rescued.  They didn't get paid for that.  I am presuming that the mention of Rabaul in the statement recognises this aspect of activities in the region.

"There were villagers in the Owen Stanleys who guided the downed airmen back to allied lines.  There were many executed by the Japanese when caught doing these things.  There were labourers in Port Moresby on the wharves subject to regular bombing  and there were the labourers carrying supplies and wounded  back and forward on the Bulldog Track, and so on."

Kokoda hero Stan Bisset MC OAM dies at 98

BY PATRICK LINDSAY

STAN BISSET (1912-2010), who died on the Sunshine Coast yesterday, was one of the heroes of the Kokoda campaign in WWII, and Australia’s oldest Wallaby rugby international.

I’ll never forget watching Stan as he stood in front of his beloved brother Butch’s grave at Bomana War Cemetery outside Port Morseby. It was August 1998, during what Stan and his fellow Kokoda Diggers called ‘The Last Parade’, their pilgrimage to say a final farewell to the mates they left behind.

It was the first time Stan had visited the grave since Butch had died in his arms on the Track 56 years earlier. He stood there silently for a long time. I could see the emotions surging through him.

As always, he stood ramrod straight but tears welled in his noble eyes as the memories flooded back.

There before him lay Butch, his life cut short by the terrible random selection of war like so many others on the Track. Stan had vowed to lead a good and productive life to honour Butch’s sacrifice.

And he had been as good as his word. He had raised a fine family, forged a long and successful career and had done all in his power to keep Butch’s memory and the story of Kokoda alive.

While I watched, Stan gently wiped the tears from his eyes with his powerful hands and then brought them to his side. He squared his shoulders and paused. Then he swept his right arm up in a crisp, practised salute: an homage from a warrior, a farewell from a brother.

Stan had a deep-rooted sense of duty and an unshakeable sense of honour. He had star quality: that indefinable amalgam of physical presence and character that sets the remarkable ones apart. He was a genuine sporting hero who blossomed into a military hero in the cauldron of war.

I vividly remember when I met him for the first time, doing interviews with the veterans for a documentary. My immediate thought was that they’ve ordered a hero from Central Casting and they’ve sent the perfect specimen.

Stan’s former commanding officer and lifelong friend, the late Phil Rhoden, told me that Stan had no time to grieve for Butch during the battles along the Track and took many years to recover from the loss.

Like so many other Kokoda veterans, the campaign was one of the defining experiences of Stan’s life. Somehow, Stan dealt with the blows and got on with his life.

Stan Bisset is quite simply one the finest men I ever met. I was privileged to call him a friend and a mentor for twenty years. He personified so many attributes of the Digger to me: courage (both moral and physical); compassion; selflessness; independence; loyalty; resourcefulness; devotion; coolness; and humour.

He carried himself with the bearing of a natural leader and a champion sportsman. Even as he neared his century, he continued to inspire me and all those who know him with his dogged refusal to surrender any ground to Father Time.

Since the rediscovery of the Kokoda story about 15 years ago, barely a day would go by without someone wanting to contact Stan and meet him. Without fail, he gave his time and his support.

In 2000, Stan was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his service to veterans, particularly through the 2/14th Battalion Association.

Stan is survived by Gloria and his children and grandchildren

Stan Bisset, like his story, is timeless.

Patrick Lindsay is an author and Chairman of the Kokoda Track Foundation. This obituary appeared earlier on the Foundation’s website - http://www.kokodatrackfoundation.org

Kokoda improvements boost trekker safety

BY KEITH JACKSON

THE AUSTRALIAN Government has committed an additional $3.1 million to fund safety projects along the Kokoda Track.

Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, and PNG Tourism and Culture Minister, Charles Abel, said the grant was an important joint initiative.

The first tranche of $1.8 million, announced in September, helped fast-track vital safety enhancements along the Track following a tragic plane crash in August.

The second tranche million will fund major safety projects associated with airstrips, roads, footbridges, communications and trekking health and safety.

The funding will cover navigation equipment, a dedicated radio frequency and new weather broadcasting for flights to Kokoda and the Kokoda airstrip will be upgraded and brought back to its original length.

A vehicle route to Kokoda airstrip will be constructed and the Owers Corner road upgraded to all-weather status.

At the same time new a new radio network will be installed to give trek leaders and communities more reliable communication access.

The Ministers said that over the last six months, the so-called ‘Kokoda Safety Package’ had already addressed key areas including maintenance and equipment for local airstrips and urgent repairs to the Owers Corner road and nearby bridges.

"This season is expected to see a record number of visitors to Kokoda,” Mr Garrett said, “and while all the risks associated with this challenging walk cannot be completely removed they can be reduced.

"The government is really pleased to be working with the PNG government to improve safety on the Kokoda Track, as well as assisting local communities."

Mr Abel said it was important that communities along the track are looked after because of their support for trekkers.