Old writer on the block: Kokoda Track: 101 Days

Monday 2 October 2023

Kokoda Track: 101 Days

What is it with publishers, that they let award-winners slip into out of print? This was a bloody good book, one that caused me a lot of angst. Eve Pownall Honour Book, 2008 Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards.

Shortlisted in the NSW Premier's History Awards, 2007. My aim was to take the complex story of a complex campaign, and explain why it was important for a bunch of under-trained and poorly-supported militia to hold out crack Japanese troops who vastly outnumbered them.

The book has one clear moral: War is a risky get-rich-quick scheme, where the people who plan to get rich quickly have no plans to take any of the risks.

The new cover.

Kokoda is the story of luck, where the right people happened to be in the right place at the right time. They were sent to defend an entirely unimportant piece of ground, the airstrip at Kokoda, but they ended up fighting a dogged rearguard action as they moved slowly along the Kokoda Track, most of the time with inadequate support and equipment, holding off a far larger Japanese force, until reinforcements could reach them. Even after that, the Australian forces were massively outnumbered, but 101 days after the first fighting began when an Australian patrol chanced on the Japanese invasion force, the Australians walked back into Kokoda.

I have never walked the track, and at my age I probably won't, but when I was 17, the same age as some of the militia in the 39th and 53rd battalions, I was working in New Guinea, at the Moresby end of the track. It was in peace-time, but I still remember the culture shock of landing in that environment. I met and talked to a few of those who were there in the war. I was always good at getting older males to tell me their tales: it is probably what got me into the way of writing history.

The story of the campaign is a human tale, a story of courage and grit -- and gutless cowardice by two generals who had oozed their way into command by political means. But I have no plans to write that prosecution brief again. Suffice it to say that I talked to one of Blamey's staff (my uncle, as it happened), and I read what others had to say, and I know who I admire.

There were some good blokes on the Kokoda Track. It was originally referred to as "the Owen Stanley track", and it was only when that super-egotist MacArthur tried to grab all the credit that it became called by that clumsy Americanism "Kokoda Trail".

You see, MacArthur tried to control all the press releases, and the journalists who hadn't been there took the lead that had been set by Yank PR men, cowering in a bunker in Melbourne. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Australian War Memorial toed the wrong party line when they nailed their colours to the 'Kokoda Trail' mast. The loudest proponent of that name was a clown who never went north, and who later distinguished himself by his virulent defence of Robin Askin, a well-known Liberal premier and crook who was, if anything, even more corrupt than Thomas Blamey.