Kokoda Track

The Kokoda Trail or Track is a single-file foot thoroughfare that runs 96 kilometres (60 mi) overland – 60 kilometres (37 mi) in a straight line – through the Owen Stanley Range in Papua New Guinea. The track was the location of the 1942 World War II battle between Japanese and Allied – primarily Australian – forces in what was then the Australian territory of Papua.

The track runs from Owers Corner in Central Province, 50 kilometres (31 mi) east of Port Moresby, across rugged and isolated terrain which is only passable on foot, to the village of Kokoda in Oro Province. It reaches a height of 2,190 metres (7,185 ft) as it passes around the peak of Mount Bellamy. The track travels primarily through the land of the Mountain Koiari people.

Hot, humid days with intensely cold nights, torrential rainfall and the risk of endemic tropical diseases such as malaria make it a challenging trek. Hiking the trail normally takes between four and twelve days; the fastest recorded time is 16 hours 34 minutes.

Kokoda

Kokoda is a station town in the Oro Province of Papua New Guinea. It is famous as the northern end of the Kokoda Track, site of the eponymous Kokoda Track campaign of World War II. In that campaign, it had strategic significance because it had the only airfield along the Track. In the decades preceding, it had been a foothills settlement near the gold fields.

In 1942 after being turned back in the middle of an end-around flanking manoeuver in the Battle of Milne Bay by the Australian AIF and Militia Forces, the Japanese invasion force intended an overland route to the capital, Port Moresby, via Kokoda. Because of this, it was the site of a number of significant engagements between the Japanese and Australian forces, and was captured and recaptured several times before the final Australian victory.

The station is linked by a rough road and a two-hour journey to the provincial capital of Popondetta.

In August 2009 Kokoda airstrip was the destination for Airlines PNG Flight CG4684 that crashed whilst attempting to land. All 13 people on board were killed in the crash including nine Australian passengers who were due to trek the Kokoda Track, a Japanese passenger and three Papua New Guineans including the two pilots.

Slim Dusty

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David Gordon Kirkpatrick AO MBE, known professionally as Slim Dusty (13 June 1927 – 19 September 2003), was an Australian country music singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer, who was an Australian cultural icon and one of the country's most awarded stars, with a career spanning nearly seven decades, the archetypical "Father of County Music". He was known to record songs in the legacy of Australian poets Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson that represented the Australian bush lifestyle and also for his many trucking songs. Dusty was the first Australian to have a No. 1 international hit song, with a version of Gordon Parsons' "A Pub with No Beer". He received an unequalled 37 Golden Guitar and two Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) awards and was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame and the Country Music Roll of Renown. At the time of his death, at the age of 76, Dusty had been working on his 106th album for EMI Records. In 2007, his domestic record sales in Australia surpassed seven million. During his lifetime, Dusty was considered an Australian National Treasure. He performed "Waltzing Matilda", Australia's national song, at the closing ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.