The day started with a strange wailing, hooting call drifting down off the mountain. It was still dark. Twice. Each call elicited a murmur of comment from the porters before they dropped into silence. I waited for more and wondered who or what was out so early or so late. I dropped off again and…
I wake early and gaze into the dark. The sky is backlit by a dying moon so its hard to determine the time. No one is moving so I drift back to sleep. Eventually the sound of a morning start filters through. Tent flies are unzipped with a riiiiiiiiiip. Bodies roll over in their sleeping…
The moon rose last night over the village just as we were thinking of heading to bed. Its brightness startled us and we stood in the silence and stared at the spectacle of massive hardwoods silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Well, at least until we were distracted in turn by the fireflies which skidded through…
A fitful nights sleep after our first day on the track. Dinner last night was a saveloy (plastic sausage) and a serving of Deb (powdered potato) with some tomato sauce. It hit the spot and the porters were delighted to be done with the weight of the meat. The full moon lifted through the cloud…
After messing around at Port Moresby we got on the road out to Bomana Cemetery where we were reminded in a most sombre way what this is really about. 3,700 headstones gleamed white in the sun marking what Kokoda represents. This is not just any old track after all. We held a brief memorial service,…
The day started with the occasional whooshing car alerting me to the pending dawn. Tradies getting to site early and telling me to wake up long before the alarms chimed at 0530. But if it wasn’t the tradies waking me up it would have been the dodgy mattress on the church hall floor where we…
I need to get this gear sorted. The clothes are being culled in favour of supplements of the dietry kind. But it still needs sorting. The scroggin needs mixing up and putting into sachets for each day as does the drink supplement. I fear it is still going to weigh more than I want. Maybe…
Time to start the anti – malaria drug regime. That seems to make the pending trek all the more real, even more so than all the kilometres we have been hauling up and down the last six weeks or more. Better get the final gear sorted out and equipment checked. We fly out on Tuesday morning. I am…
Diary 15 September 2010. Sydney Fringe Festival – bursting out of the inner west suburbs. Or something like that which is the tag line. Bursting out into the art deco Petersham Town Hall which is echoing with the voices of the few who have shown up. The ceiling is magnificent. The tiling is gorgeous. Mr…
Funny how these pictures keep drawing you back (pun alert). To an age of innocence, which is not how anyone would usually describe 1969. Mind you I am not entirely convinced the date on the picture is correct – I like to think I would have been drawing my Dad in this way in 1965…