Sunshine Coast Hinterland Times

The World War II battleground of Kokoda in New Guinea is seen as the supreme test of Australian diggers their raw grit and determination against the far more numerous and experienced Japanese soldiers. These days walking the infamous Kokoda Track has become more than a physical challenge for many Australians – it is to stumble back 60 years over sites that witnessed astonishing bravery, horrifying pain and hardship.

Local Queensland MP Andrew Powell recently returned from his personal Kokoda experience. It stretched him to his physical limits and helped reshape his view of war.

THERE WERE several reasons why I wanted to walk the Kokoda Track. As a politician I quickly realised that one of the most important days for any MP is ANZAC Day. It’s certainly one of our busiest. And as a Generation Xer I have always struggled to understand what it was like to serve on a front line in a war zone. So I have found it very challenging to stand up and address an ANZAC Day crowd without any real appreciation of what war was all about.

I had two grandfathers who served one in the Australian army and one in the American army. Both served in WW II in New Guinea, although not at Kokoda. They both died when I was quite young so I never got to talk to them about their contributions in that war. And as times goes on we are losing those personal stories between the generations.

I also had a goal to keep fit because you lead a very sedentary life as a politician and in hindsight, I haven’t done nearly enough exercise.

Andrew’s trekking group surround the last of the Fuzzy Wuzzy angels, who helped injured Australian soldiers to get medical treatment along the Track

Very quickly on the Track you got a sense of how hard it must have been. I thought about that small CMF force that was basically holding the Japanese at bay until the AIF arrived several weeks later. People slammed the CMF as choco soldiers who would melt at the first sign of action. But they didn’t. The stood up monumentally to the Japanese and held them at bay.

I wonder how many Australians today appreciate the predicament they were in. Here were several battles over a number of months when the Japanese came as close as seeing the lights of Port Moresby. When you stand in the Japanese trenches on Loribaiwa Ridge you realise how close they got. They literally had one ridge to go. That puts everything you trekked through into perspective. If the Australians hadn’t decided on a fighting withdrawal, every step of the way, and lost good men in the process, then the Japanese could have kept coming.

Exhaustion is part of the modern-day experience of walking the Kokoda Track. For Andrew Powell, it was a time to think seriously about getting fit.

You can still come across battle sites and there are relics all along the Track. There was one site we came to at Eora Creek where there were shells, ration materials, helmets, rifles – and you stand there and realise more clearly what it was like. A lot of the villages along the Track now have museums where you can pay to go and see these relics. It all helps with the income of their community.

You can see where the Australians tried to cross Eora Creek and where they were slaughtered because the Japanese had such a strong defensive position. This is one of the places where you have a real sense of sadness and futility around war. And I say that knowing that a lot of people had no choice but to fight, because it was a decision made by higher powers.

At the end of the trek I think I gained a greater respect for anyone who had served during that campaign and that war. Even though at times I had a hard day along the track, I wasn’t being shot at, I didn’t have dysentery or malaria, I was drinking sanitised water, and I had someone carrying a lot of my gear.

I was well fed and relatively fit yet I still found it hard. I don’t know how those soldiers put up with what they did, although there were moments on that trek when you realise that your body can always do more than you think it can, if it has to. The reality is that those men had to. You also realise the importance of mateship. Many soldiers only survived because of the close bonds they had with others in their units.

The discovery of war relics along the Kokoda Track is still a surprise to trekkers 60 years on. They are a stark reminder of the horror once occupying this tranquil environment

A most poignant memory that I will always remember is the service we held on Brigade Hill. We were fatigued but we all realised we were standing in part of Australia. One hundred brave Aussies had died up there. We held a minute’s silence and there were tears because, despite the wonderful scenery, emotionally you could not divorce yourself from the history of the place.

One of the most sobering experiences of the whole trip was at the end of the trek when we were in the bus on the outskirts of Port Moresby. We were pretty cock ‘a hoop having finished the trek and we arrived at Bomana War Cemetery. We were suddenly confronted by 3000 white headstones and the bus went instantly silent. Someone let fly with an expletive that was incredibly appropriate at what we had suddenly witnessed.

Most of us went off by ourselves and stood, frustrated at how many had to die, and knowing that the headstones represented a small percentage of those who had died elsewhere in that war.

Walking the Kokoda Track was very hard. Will I do it again? I might, with my wife or my children if they wanted to. That was really my first trekking experience – nine days out in the bush – and it has increased my interest in more trekking, but perhaps in different locations.

I have studied history, but what this trek gives you is a sense of the man on the street who volunteered to fight, and the personal hell that they would have gone through. Studying history is several steps removed from reality. War is very much in your face when you walk the Track.

Has it turned me into a pacifist? No, because I still expect that there will be times when war is necessary. One of the American presidents said that sometimes war is a necessary evil and I think that sums it up perfectly.

But my Kokoda experience has changed my perspective on things. It has made me more reflective about war. I can now look beyond the glamorisation of conflict. I have a better appreciation of the human spirit, and its abilities to rise to the challenges war brings. But now, more than ever, I’m also conscious of the cost, the senselessness, of war. And it’s that which will leave the most lasting impression on me.