Steep trek
Three Air Force personnel have taken part in an imposing
but fulfilling walk.

FLTLT Jennifer Crombie with Papua New Guinea locals.

FLYING over the Owen Stanley Ranges in Papua New Guinea, 13 personnel – including three Air Force members – from Headquarters Northern Command in Darwin sensed the size of the challenge they’d taken on: Kokoda.

They were going to trek 100km carrying 30-40kg of equipment, including patrol rations, for eight days.

They hoped their three months of training up and down high-rise fire stairwells would prepare them for the almost 7km of vertical ascent they would encounter.

The Kokoda Track, as they found out, was often just boot-width wide. Humidity hovered around 95 per cent and track gradients of greater than 1:1 were the norm.

Sticky mud slides, icy creek crossing and tree-root-gnarled tracks added to the difficulty of balancing heavy packs and avoiding landing on their backside.

Breathtaking vistas down steep-sided, cloud-capped valleys, magnificent rainforests, picturesque streams and villages nestled quietly into jungle landscapes provided a stark contrast each day to aching muscles, painful joints and bruised psyches at the end of each 12-hour walk.

Corporal Geraldine Bainrot, Sergeant John Carroll and Flight Lieutenant Jennifer Crombie were the Air Force members of the group that accomplished the milestone earlier this year.

For FLTLT Crombie, the hiking sated a curiosity her World War II-veteran grandfather had sparked.

“While he wasn’t involved in fighting along the Kokoda Track itself, he served up in the north around the Gona/Sanananda area,” she said. “In later years, he has taken to pulling out old photos and books and talking to us in great detail about his experiences when we go to visit, and I’ve always been curious to see what it must have been like.”

FLTLT Crombie considered the track a tremendous personal challenge – much more difficult than her climb of Mt Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo or the Queen Charlotte Track in New Zealand.

She wasn’t disappointed. “Kokoda was by far the longest trek in the most difficult terrain and with the most history,” she said .

“The memorials at Isurava and Brigade Hill were absolutely beautiful, but stark reminders of the horrific conditions under which both the Australians and Japanese were fighting.

“We stayed at Ower’s Corner for some time to absorb all the different emotions – a sense of awe for the Australians who had fought along the track, our silent thoughts as we remembered those who had given their lives on the track in the most arduous of conditions, and at the same time our own sense of personal accomplishment.”

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