Seeking stories from Kokoda Track

A team of international researchers is on a mission to gather first-hand accounts of Papua New Guineans’ wartime experience along the Kokoda Track.

The project will draw on the expertise of historians and locals to capture an “oral history”, recording interviews and stories to be curated by the PNG National Museum and Art Gallery.

The research is being done under the Australian and PNG Governments’ joint Kokoda Initiative, to manage the heritage and environment along the track.

Deakin University researcher Dr Jonathan Ritchie has said the work will acknowledge the untold impact of Kokoda and World War II on Papua New Guineans.

“What this exercise is doing is casting a very much overdue light on the stories and experiences of the Papua New Guineans who were affected on both sides of the conflict,” he said.

“Unlike in Australia and in America, and to a lesser extent in Japan where some of these stories of our own fighters are now very well known, the stories about Papua New Guineans, which are in many ways equally important, have been left unknown.

“Unfortunately we’re at the stage, with the war now 70 years ago, that many of the people who have direct memories of that time are just no longer with us.”

The project will capture the untold stories of Papua New Guineans living through the Second World War, not just along the track but across the country.

“We’re not just speaking about the 96 kilometres – but also acknowledging that many of the Papua New Guineans who were directly impacted by the fighting on the Kokoda trail also came from Oro Province and many other parts of Papua New Guinea,” Dr Ritchie said.

“So we’re casting our net just a bit more broadly than the string of villages along the track.”

The research team has visited Hanau village in Northern Province, home of the late Raphael Oimbari, to collect accounts of the famous ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels’.

The name was given by Australian troops to the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit Carriers, Papua New Guinean locals who delivered supplies to troops and escorted the wounded down the Kokoda Track.

Oimbari is the most well-known ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel’, who was recorded assisting injured Australian soldier George ‘Dick’ Whittington in the iconic photograph by photojournalist George Silk.