Day 9, Thursday 26 April, Ofi Creek to Owers Corner, snakes, flash floods, separation, men in skins with no shorts, tent spooning

Had a good sleep last night, the best so far, besides the one in Port Moresby, in a big nice cosy dry comfortable bed with a nice pillow. Hot shower, real meat and fresh fruit and veggies in the restaurant, beer at the bar, some nice smelling dry clothes. Oh I digress I'm thinking of other things.

Not pleasant this morning putting on wet boots.  I know that we have a lot of river crossings today, so, no point thinking about being uncomfortable, just got to do it! We are so close to the end. We only have one more night left on the track. Tonight. Wow. I can't believe it.  I've almost kicked the big K out of the ball park.

Massive climb out of Ofi Creek this morning. What am i saying??? There is a massive climb every day all day long. I'm not saying that anymore this place is just rugged and mountainous everywhere all the time.

Trekking up the creek

Today is turning out to be really pretty. I think I counted over 28 creek and river crossings before lunch. At times the track was the river or creek, and that's where we walked. After five hours of this we arrive for lunch at the base of Imita Ridge.

One of 28 creek crossings and that was before lunch

OK so lets remember why we are here, time for a history recap.  The battles on this track began on 21 July 1942 in the north of PNG when Kokoda village fell to the Japanese. Kokoda was important because it is on flat ground and has an airstrip, so is essential for supplies. The battles continued along the track from Kokoda in the north, toward Port Moresby in the south, with the Aussies exercising a fighting retreat. A fighting retreat was against orders, but the only thing they were able to do. Australian command had basically no knowledge of the terrain or the situation at the start of the conflict. More troops slowly arrived weeks after the commencement of battle when command realised how serious the situation was becoming.



By 16 September more Australian troops arrived from Port Moresby (obviously walking the opposite way to us) and dug themselves into defensive positions at Imita Ridge.  The Japanese were exhausted and were short on supplies.  The Japanese were ordered to withdraw. Australian patrols pushed forward off Imita ridge back towards Kokoda, finding that the Japanese had slipped away. Over the next six weeks the Japanese fell back toward Kokoda still fighting Aussies along the way. The Aussies were now also plagued by supply issues as well. On November 2, Australia succeeded in retaking Kokoda village, which had fallen to the Japanese four months prior.


Let's not forget that at the time, PNG was an Australian Territory.  Imita Ridge, which is as far as the Japanese Army got, is only about 40 km from Port Moresby which is where the Japanese were trying to get to to use as a base to invade Australia.  They had already tried to attack Moresby from the Coral Sea and were defeated by the Australian and US Navy.   At this point in the war Japan had already invaded many other Asian countries. This was really close, very close, the security of Australia was in great danger. And meanwhile the majority of our troops were fighting in Europe.


You can actually see Port Moresby from Imita Ridge, that's how close it is.  It is incredible to think that this major threat to our country was just 40 km away from happening, and even more incredible to think that once you are over this ridge, the track is not really so bad, imagine if they got a little further..... 


It's hard to understand that at the start of this battle the army sent 300 army reservist men to Kokoda who were ill equipped, some had never fired a gun and were told to take their tennis racquets. These men battled for weeks on their own to protect our country.  Amazing to think that the battle for Kokoda became such a major threat to national security that the Prime Minister of Australia defied the President of America and the Prime Minister of England and returned troops from Europe and Asia to fight on the track.


OK so Imita Ridge is massive! (I just said it again didn't I).  It's a 2.5 km trek with an elevation of over 850 metres. Tough going.  There seems to be be a bit of an Imita Ridge competition.  Apparently if you can do it in under 42 minutes, thats a really good time.  So today, we get to go for it, if we want to, just get up that ridge as fast as we can. You'd think that after so many days trekking I wouldn't get excited about this, but I did!


Worst thing about doing it after lunch was that we had new ration packs adding a couple of kilos, and we had refilled water as well, adding a few more.  Challenge or what! Bring it on.  So we got all professional, Rob got his stop watch out and we all went for it.  I ran, sprinted actually. It was up hill and soooooo steep. I didn't keep this up for long it was damn impossible. 

Appo (Rob), Brad and Joey, first three boys up Imita

After a few minutes I was in front of Kat and couldn't even see Kerri behind me any more.  I could see Joey and Blake in front of me, just, but couldn't see Rob or Brad anywhere. We climbed and climbed. Kat and I not being able to help it kept stopping to check if each other were OK.   Kat was actually getting quite close to me, I didn't mind though it was a little freaky in the jungle feeling all alone. I had passed Blake by now and could see Joey up ahead.

Myself, Kat & Kerri, first three girls up Imita

We got to a creek/waterfall. I could not see where the track was on the other side. So I went right. Kat behind me was lucky, one of the porters had come up behind her and told her to go left, which she did. Doh. I went the wrong way. I found myself in front of a vertical face covered in tree roots.  This is where I got silly. My legs were so tired I couldn't cope with going back to the left because it was uphill through the creek. So I decided it was easier to to climb the vertical face (yep, i know, blonde, what was I thinking). Anyway when I got to the top (it was fun by the way) Kat was in front of me. That's how it stayed for the rest of the way.  We both grunted up that hill like a couple of Sharapova's.  We were making such noises of pain that we were actually laughing at each other between grunts. We eventually got the top of the ridge, Kat in 34 mins and me in 35. I was pretty happy. I was also tired! But on the bright side we had about 45 minutes to wait for the others to get to the top.  It takes about an hour and a half at normal pace.

At the top of Imita Ridge (almost)

The rest of the afternoon involved, you guessed it, walking up and down hills.  We are camping by Goldie River tonight, we have to cross it first.  It started raining. Today 10 inches in a couple of hours. It was just insane. And slower going that in the rain yesterday, completely different soil type today. 


It was absolutely pouring and really dark under the canopy.  We were just trudging along and suddenly Joey just shouted at me (loud) to stop. I had never heard Joey like that before and I just knew not to muck around so I stopped straight away. Then he said don't move.  I had already frozen anyway, and as my eyes adjusted to the light and the rain I could see an adder lying just centimetres in front of my feet. It actually didn't freak me out at all, I just stood there looking at this snake, in the pouring rain, thinking, shit that was quite close. A flick with a walking pole and the snake was back in the bush and we were off again.  Good buddy work by Joey today I have to say.


Joey and I were up the front.  We didn't know but up the back strong man Isaac the porter was having a panic and trying to get the slowest of the group to walk faster so we could get across Goldie River before it flooded after the rain.  We arrived at the river.  Were told to drop all our packs.  The porters started taking them across.  There was a sense of urgency.  PNG men appeared from all over the place. The river was already swollen, brown and running extremely fast but still passable, just. So Greg gave the go ahead to go, first Deb, then Mark, then Joey, myself and Kerri.  


It's hard to explain what this river crossing was like.  There was a rope from one side to the other, we walked across sideways holding it in front of us. I'm quite strong and it was damn hard to hang on to.  The current and the noise were incredible, the water chest deep (normally ankle deep). More than once my feet left the river bed due to depth or the current just picking them up. I made it across and was standing in knee deep water with Joey.  Kerri was right behind me.   She was just about across when a wall of water came down the river and it rose suddenly in just seconds.  Kerri actually had to let go of the rope and roll on to her back as the water had risen so much and so fast it was just gushing into her face.  She was surrounded by Papuan guys who helped her out. There was no way anyone else was getting over.  Way too dangerous now.  So , 5 on our side and 7 on the other. Whoops. Joey and I estimated in the next few minutes the water rose a few metres.

Goldie River in flood

So five of us including myself are on the camp site side.  We realised that there was another group there. In our spot. Damn. Then we discovered that Team 1 had actually not stopped due to this reason and had continued on to Owers Corner, the end of the track, which was about another two hours walk away. It was already about 4.30 or 5 in the afternoon, this was not looking like a good situation.


We spent a while just walking around checking the river to see if it was dropping (it was still raining and the river still rising).  It dawned on us that there was not much more that we could do, just sit and wait. Some of the porters tried to cut a massive tree down (much to my horror) to create a bridge, the tree snapped in half on impact and raced down the river. The waiting game was on it seemed. We could have walked on to Owers Corner but did we did not want to leave the rest of the team, we wanted to finish together.


The next thing we realised was that our camp invaders were a group of men who were nearly all wearing skins with no shorts over the top. I mean this is just illegal! Geez it was like a superhero dress up party. I needed a blindfold stat.


Kindly the men in skins and no shorts offered us tea and some food. They also had a fire and shelter. We were on the good side of the river. The other 7 of our team sitting on the opposite steep bank on tree roots in pissing down rain.  We dried out, chatted with the men in skins and ate. They were really helpful and left a little food before they eventually went to bed (PNG time, about 1830)


After the superheros went to bed we decided to go through the packs that we did have. We had no food except some mars bars (terrible shame), some water, 2 single person tents and 3 sleeping bags between us. Also a small bottle of Southern Comfort (I know lucky right!) which we drank promptly after finding.


Looked like we weren't going anywhere tonight so we set the two tents up under the shelter by the fire.  We spread some banana leaves on the ground first, it was so muddy. Three sleeping bags, two tents. Going to get interesting. Mark didn't want to sleep in a tent as his daughter Kat was still across the river and he wanted to stay awake. Kerri and Deb hopped into one tent, that left Joey and I to get in the other. Besides the fact I stank and Joey stank (we couldn't tell, I know now how stinky people can live together because when you both stink its not so obvious) it was actually quite cosy I guess. Joey and I had a chat and before long both went to sleep.


Some time later the rest of the crew suddenly appeared. They had made it across the river, in the dark, after the water level dropped to a safe level. It was just after 10.30 pm. It was a fairly embarrassing moment when Joey opened the tent and we both looked out with sleepy bleary eyes and disheveled hair. The laughter started and the jokes about spooning and sporking started straight away. We were not going to live this down for a while.


Greg told us to pack up our gear, we weren't staying here, we were going to walk to the end of the track. What the??? Its the middle of the night, no lights except our headlights. Wow. So we did. We packed up, still enduring the sporking jokes, in the pitch black and mud.  We found the rest of our packs.  And we walked. We stayed in single file near our buddy for the day and kept quite close together to improve vision. Some of the porters did not have head lights so they stuck fairly close by.


The walk was about two hours, not as rugged as what we had been doing but it was slippery. We were walking on clay. The most slippery surface we had encountered.  There came a point where it was so slippery that you really couldn't physically help each other any more because then both of you slipped. Everybody went over, a lot. Greg slipped more than once and not very gracefully, once right off the side of the track into what seemed like oblivion. So glad we could not see too far it would have been worse I think.  Nobody really spoke much except to swear or grunt. We were all tired and cold. Joey and I had to space out from each other a little because we were slipping so much we were almost knocking each other over. This is the real Kokoda. This is what our boys were trying to fight in. For months relentlessly.


Then, as we were coming to the top of a rise at about 1 am, I could see through the mist some sort of arch. It took me a minute to get it. This was it, we had done it, we had reached the end of the track.  It happened so suddenly it was almost an anticlimax. We weren't sure what to do for a minute.  There were a few hugs, a few well dones. The feeling of elation was there a little but the noise of the elation was missing, I think we were all too knackered. I took a photo, it was pitch black but there was no way I could let this moment go without capturing it.


We set up our tents, which we usually do in the light. It took Kenneth, a porter, and I 25 minutes to set up a single person tent in the dark. We had three attempts. He's done it a million times before. We were killing ourselves laughing.  Then we all regrouped and ate some food finally and had some hot chocolate. I shared my food with Kenneth, we were both starving and freezing. We were feeling a little more lively by then, it was sinking in.  We were all quite jovial after that.  Team 1 who were already in bed asleep didn't stay asleep for long.


Oh and theres a weird thing in a building here, I think it might be called a toilet but I am not quite sure.


Finally some sleep, not much, just a couple of hours, after an absolutely epic last day on the Kokoda Track. In fact I couldn't have asked for a better last day.

The end of the track, 1 am, this is such a great photo!