The Dangers of a Walk in the Park

Two words. A mixture of seven vowels and eight consonants, a mixture most people would rather not think about. Bloody diarrhoea. While there is a small amount of glamour in hardship, none of it is conveyed by those two words. Perched on a relatively comfortable toilet seat in Melbourne’s inner east, I realise that maybe this is as close as I’ll get to the experience of almost 70,000 people who fought in Papua New Guinea in World War II – despite having just completed the 96km walk across the Owen Stanley ranges, where much of the fighting took place, known as the Kokoda track.

As a legacy of tales from the war, the track has the reputation of being extremely difficult. Unfortunately, in recent times its notoriety has been augmented by several deaths. On the 17th of April last year Samantha Killen, a 36 year old Victorian woman, reportedly died from either dehydration or asthma only days into the walk. Less than a week later on the 22nd of April, Chris Frost, a 26 year old New South Welshman, died from a suspected heat related illness. Then on the 11th of August, thirteen people died when a plane, that was chartered to fly to the Kokoda end of the walk, crashed into the side of a mountain in bad conditions.

According to No Roads Expeditions General Manager, Doug Dent, “April is the busiest time of year to do the trek, especially around ANZAC day.”

So should the many walkers currently over in PNG be worried for their safety? And what makes the track dangerous?

Mr. Dent, who completed the track at the age of 65, claims “we don’t actually have many people sustain an injury.”

Image: Michael and Linasa crossing one of the many rivers.

However, in order to get a first hand perspective of the potential dangers, I walked the track from late September to early October last year along with three other walkers paying to be there, and four No Roads guides who were paid to be there.

As you would expect, most people walk the track with friends or family. I went with an old school friend, Dean Baker. Turning 23 the day before we start walking, Dean is a fifth year Science/Engineering student from Melbourne. He is generally fit although his coeliac disease could cause him problems trekking; he can’t eat gluten or he won’t be able to process food for up to a week, resulting in diarrhoea and lethargy.

When we booked our trip we knew there could be up to 20 people in our group. Whilst this isn’t as many trekkers as allowed by some other companies, we both felt it was more than ideal. So we were both relieved to find out that there were only two others in our group, as were they – our first slice of luck.

It was explained to us by the No Roads representative, who met us upon arrival at Jacksons International Airport, that other people had paid deposits for our trek. However, they pulled out due to feeling under prepared after reappraising the dangers of the walk.

Meeting Damien O’Neill and Michael Lewis at the airport in Port Moresby turned out to be rather appropriate. Damien, 39, and Michael, 42, are both flight attendants from Brisbane. They both appear to be fit for their age. Whilst Damien is medium height and stocky build, Michael is slightly taller and a bit thinner.

Waiting to leave the hotel to go have dinner, we browse the day’s newspaper. Whilst the front page story details how around 60 people broke out of the local prison, the page three news is of more concern; “Australian dies walking Kokoda Track for charity.”

Later at dinner, Michael receives a text message from his wife alerting him to yesterday’s tragedy. Paul Bradfield, 38, died in his sleep on his wife’s birthday. He was walking the track to raise money for Camp Quality, who had helped his family whilst his youngest daughter was battling leukaemia.

Worryingly there were reportedly no signs of him having any difficulties during the day. He just woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t breathe.

I nervously ate as much of my food as I could.

It turned out we had all received much the same instructions from loved ones: don’t die.

In light of the news, we discuss why we are all doing the trek. Damien says he’s doing it “mainly for the challenge.” This seems to be the same reason we are all doing it as none of us have any direct link to those who fought.

“If you don’t do things then you just end up sitting at home,” adds Dean.

The next day we actually start walking and I start to feel much more relaxed.

Simon Euki, 28, is the leader of our group. Like the other three guides he grew up in the hillside village of Kagi, halfway along the track, although now lives in Port Moresby.

I am encouraged by the sight of his build. Admittedly he is a fair bit more muscular than me, but he is still quite light and skinny.

Walking up the first hill, an ascent of more than 400m in altitude, I follow in the footsteps of 24 year old Linasa Ben, our pacesetter. He later explains to me that he weighs around 55kg and up to 58kg when he gets “fat.”

At the top of the hill there’s a slight wait of a minute or so for Damien. He weighs around 100kg and I soon realise that if I were carrying an extra 35kg everyone would be waiting a lot longer.

Image: Going up hill on day 2.

Michael explains, “If there’s one thing about Damien, it’s that he’s determined. No matter how slow he has to go, he’ll get there.”

Both Dean and Michael end up weighing 80kg, although before the walk they weighed 82kg and 86kg respectively.

Along with my weight advantage, my training has held me in good stead. Climbing 64 stories of stairs, once or twice a week, in tropical Malaysia has prepared me well.

“People tend to become dehydrated in the first couple of days because they’re still acclimatising to the humidity,” Mr. Dent explains to me later.

He also tells me that dehydration is a problem because it can lead to loss of concentration, which can in turn lead to sprained ankles and the like.

Despite this, “some people get on the booze the night before walking,” he says.

Not of his own doing, Dean’s preparations were hampered by falling off his bike, resulting in four stitches in his knee. This was only four weeks before the walk.

Michael’s preparations were hampered by a back problem.

“Six weeks ago I couldn’t walk.”

He explained that after doing a few too many sit ups, he woke up the next day with his spine visibly out of place and had to go to the doctors. So getting to the end of the first day in good shape was quite a relief.

The guides, by contrast, walk the track roughly once every two weeks. “If I were walking by myself it would take me three days,” says Linasa. It is taking us seven.

At the first campsite we meet another No Roads group going the other way. Their Australian guide, Richard Godden, reinforces to us the dangers of our already remote location. “If you need CPR you’re gone for. By the time we call the insurance agency and find an available helicopter, if the weather’s not great it could be 48 hours before they get to you.”

Day 2 was the hardest day of the walk, or so we had been told. Over 1300m of ascent, divided into two sections of gruelling uphill.

On that day that Dean got seriously bad cramps in both his legs. “I couldn’t bend my knees so I had to kick a root each step to get them to unlock.”

On top of that, we had pizza for dinner that night which he couldn’t eat. Fortunately he could eat some of the rice that the guides were eating.

Kila Dannis, 20, and Tobias Beliki, 22, were the other two guides. They did a lot of the cooking. Often they would go ahead of us to prepare lunch for when we arrived. In that sense it was the quite a luxurious hike.

Both of them wore only one shoe for most of the hike, not even a boot. Kila explained that he had a blister and he found it more comfortable not wearing his dilapidated shoe.

In some way this made me feel better about my own blisters which had been forming on the outsides of my toes.

Image: One of my blisters at the end of the walk.

Due to their jobs, our guides don’t get to spend that much time in their home village of Kagi. So we spend most of day 4 at the village, much to the relief of my feet.

This day exemplified the other reason people do Kokoda, perhaps the most import one of all. It’s fun.

Keeping a bunch of local kids entertained was quite a cultural experience as well as fun; playing cricket with energy we didn’t know we had, watching them climb on the roof to get the ball, making paper planes that couldn’t hack the tropical rain, watching them make planes out of leaves using razor blades.

As with any hike there was a lot of joke telling and innuendo to help get us through the day and enjoy ourselves.

“I’m forcing it in now because I know I’ll want it in an hour,” Dean said over breakfast. I couldn’t help but smirk.

Image: My right eye swelled up over night in Kagi.

By day 5 any sense of fear or being daunted had gone. We had reached the highest point, 2190m above sea level; it was all down hill from there. That afternoon we slid down the steep hills with almost reckless abandon in the downpour. The combination of fatigue and relief made it hard not to laugh at every slip.

Not everything was a laughing matter though as slip ups can prove costly. On the night of day 6, Michael got bad dysentery. At the end of the day’s walking, he just wanted to have a shower. In a minor lapse, he got some of the water in his mouth, just a few drops was enough.

It was painful watching him struggle through the final day.

When we finally got to Kokoda on day 7, Linasa ended the walk with his customary “packs off.” Those two words were always accompanied by an element of relief, but none greater than that day. This feeling of accomplishment had to be the reason thousands of people do the walk each year.

Ironically, the town of Kokoda seems more dangerous than the rest of the walk. There are shops there and all of the stock is kept behind bars, behind the counter as is customary in Papua New Guinea. When we’re going to bed Linasa reminds us to make sure we don’t leave anything outside the guesthouse.

“There are too many primitives,” he says.

Back at the hotel there is a sobering reminder of what we have just been lucky enough to achieve relatively incident free. The headline of the day’s paper is “Kokoda death.” Phillip Brunskill, a 55 year old New South Welshman, died from a suspected heart attack the day we finished walking.

During the war over 15,000 people died in the area. According to plaques placed as memorials, the “incidence of sickness [was] three times that of battle casualties.”

Image: One of the plaques at the memorial in Port Moresby.

It was in order to avoid sickness that I was taking my malaria tablet on my last night in Port Moresby. It was a tired and stupid decision to take it with plain tap water.

Skip to the end: A slightly updated version of my previous article about the potential hazards of the Kokoda track in PNG.