Day 6 Monday 23 April, Naduri to Brigade Hill, Underneath the uniform we are all human

Joey and Kenneth on one of
Kokoda's engineering works'
of excellence. This one is actually really great.

Today I seem to have heaps of pictures and not as much to write. Everyone must be thanking their lucky stars my diary got wet.  Joey (The Sheriff) is my buddy today. Going to have to be on my best behaviour since he is in charge of the black book.


This morning we make the steep descent out of Naduri toward Efogi.  Of course we have to go up again after. And down. And up. The terrain is similar the whole track, but the vegetation and the soil types change quite a bit.  Lots of the track is basically tree roots. PNG is probably held together by tree roots.

I have my skins on again today. Mistake. Hips are aching already and I have to keep adjusting them. Efogi is approximately half way along the track.  Greg has been telling us that at Efogi we have a surprise. I hope its fresh food. Maybe eggs, some chicken some fruit or some veggies.  I've been dreaming about it for days.

Bilams the locals make and sell. You hang she strap over your head and the bag hangs down behind your head, as opposed to carrying over your shoulder. A really sensible idea. But I get weird looks in the shops now.

Oh yeah!!!

We reach Efogi village.  This is not the surprise but its good enough for me. Fresh fruit and some pan fried sweet potato.  So I buy from the villagers some bananas, sweet potato, tamarillo and tomatoes. Quite obviously I am hungry (i'm always hungry, damn hookworms) but I share it with everyone of course. So good. Appo had never had a Tamarillo.  He though it was a bit dodgy so he sucked the insides out and the filled it up with condensed milk. And he thought I was weird hugging trees.

People have been amazed at how much I eat, given my slight size. You need about 7000 calories a day to sustain trekking like this. I wouldn't be surprised if I ate that normally. I seem to be the only one getting through my entire ration pack every day and sometimes other peoples left overs. Brad was saying this morning that he thinks the hook worm has got me and thats why I'm hungry. 

Kat going over in a creek, again

Kat and her Dad Mark

Kerri and Blake doing, um, something with stones

After our break we continue on.  Shortly after we discover that the surprise is a swim.  We have had one swim back at Templetons but it was almost dark then and the water was 6 degrees.  This is about 15 degrees. The day is fairly warm and although it's still morning its a great chance to clean up and relax. During the swim Sam and I figure out where we know each other from. We used to compete at the same karate tournaments, we have even watched each others events it turns out. Small world.

Greg our team leader

Footy before the tears

We moved on to the next village where we stopped for lunch. This village was filled with kids and dogs.  Lot's of dogs.  Joey at one point I'm sure whispered to me 'look at these parasitic animals'. And they were, I felt so sorry for them. You could actually see the fleas crawling on them. You could even see fleas in the grass where the dogs had been.  


Joey and I were keen to move on, neither of us wanted to really sit on the ground, so Joey decided to have a game of footy with the kids. It was all going well until he threw the ball and hit a little boy in the head.  Tears over, they continued playing, Joey threw the ball and hit the same boy in the head again, more tears now.  Poor Joey didn't know what to do.  I gave the little guy a hug and calmed him down. Well, lunch was a flea ridden teary disaster.  
More walking. Going up Mission Ridge was quite scary, at times the side of the track dropped away alarmingly. You really had to concentrate.

Following the battle of Isurava, the Mission Ridge/Brigade Hill battle was the next attempt to halt the Japanese. Brigade Hill is a beautiful mountain ridge. Extending from its north face it is Mission Ridge. At Mission Ridge, men weary (and depleted) from the battle at Isurava were placed along a back line and a fresh battalion was placed at the front. Headquarters were also placed at the back. This effectively created two Australian positions. The Japanese approached Mission Ridge from the north, heavy firing by a Japanese battalion commencing the battle head on.  

Climbing Brigade Hill/Mission Ridge theres about
2 cm between the front of my toes and nothing
much below for quite a while.

Meanwhile another Japanese battalion trekked throughout the night and scaled the steep western slope of Brigade Hill. At dawn the following morning they lodged themselves between the two Australian positions. Many Australians and Japanese were killed. It was a major victory for the Japanese.


We had a short service at Mission Ridge, all of us trying to comprehend the brutality of the conflict. It was so hot, there was no tree cover at all, we soon forgot all about our swim at Efogi. During the Mission Ridge service Glenn played a song written by a musician from Brisbane, Hamish Wyatt.  He did the track with Glenn a few years ago.  This is a link to his song.  Its hard to explain the emotions of Kokoda so maybe this will help for those who have not been. The film clip contains some great footage from renowned journalist at the time Damien Parer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wasceChoMfw

Now we move on to Brigade Hill, a beautiful walk today. I guess we have only done maybe 6 hours of trekking today.  

Tree stump where Kokichi Mishimura hid to escape
the Australian forces

Along the track to Brigade Hill we come across this tree stump.  This for me is a reminder of one the most moving stories from Kokoda I have heard.  Actually not just from Kokoda, ever.  Kokichi Nishimura was a Japanese Soldier who was the only member of his platoon to survive the Kokoda campaign.  For a time he hid in this tree stump to escape the Aussies.  He was eventually evacuated back to Japan, not before making the grim pledge to return and find his comrades to take them home to Japan for a proper burial.

At the age of 60, Kokichi left his wife and two children in Japan and returned to Kokoda. For the next 26 years (and 400 million yen in life savings) he lived alone on the track, searching for the bones of his comrades. He dug up and repatriated the bodies of 350 of his fallen comrades. What a truly unbelievable man. Honour, commitment, fortitude, determination. Incredible. In any battle every soldier on any side has family and friends at home waiting for them.  And that makes me think that whatever the circumstances, underneath the uniform, we are all human.  (There is a book about Kokichi, The Bone Man of Kokoda, by Charles Happell, it's really good).

We arrive at Brigade Hill in the afternoon, we have a little time to spare, so some of the porters make some spears and we try our hand at throwing them. Time for washing clothes and ourselves and then we meet for a solemn service at the Brigade Hill memorial. 

L at brigade Hill, and yes I realise I am not wearing shorts over my skins, I may have got a point in the black book for this
R checking out the damage, one blister right foot, the rest is maintenance

The service was great and we were joined by our Papuan porters also.  The site where we are standing was the burial site of about 67 Australians, until their remains were moved to the Bomana War Cemetery.    The graves are still symbolised by a pole placed in the ground for each one, for the service our porters had tied red ribbon around the tops of the poles.

Camp at Brigade Hill

Brigade Hill

At the end of the service we sang our national anthems.  Ours compared to the Papua New Guinea Anthem seemed embarrassing.  Here is this group of maybe 30 local men, some of whom have never met before and just sang their national anthem in perfect harmony. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. I honestly would have paid money to hear it. It was spine tingling stuff.  Ours sounded like crap, except for Kat who can actually sing. We seriously needed to do more with our anthem when we were  in school.  I was so proud of the PNG boys for being able to sing their anthem like that. 


Unfortunately none of us recorded this, mostly out of respect.  I looked around on you tube and I found a clip that sounds similar from another trek, the image and sound quality are quite poor but you can get the general idea. Then if you imagine hearing that in the misty daylight at the top of Brigade Hill, in amongst the poles with red ribbon, symbolising graves of Aussie soldiers, and our crew and porters, you might kind of get a feel for it. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoVuuA5LZqw

All of us after the Brigade Hill service

This kids loved posing for photos, and then loved
looking at them

Chatting to some local kids, um OK we may have been singing. These little guys were singing at 3am.
I didn't mind, it was great

Possibly one of the cutest kids ever, I really really like this photo

Workout, dinner and and then team meeting time again.  Whiteleg is really racking up the points in the book. This afternoon he sat on the ground exhausted at the end of the day, looked up at me and said 'Jen, don't you ever get tired?'. I was not sure what to say. I told him I do get tired,  but it's just walking, one foot in front of the other and getting your head and attitude in the right space. I hoped it helped him. I would need to use this advice for myself in a couple of days....

Bed time again. It's chilly and a little bit rainy. We go to bed so early, its weird.  We only have a short day tomorrow I'm looking forward to it. Oh and that bit about not having much to write today, I was so wrong!