New Zealand-born Monckton spent 12 eventful years (1895-1907) in Papua, then a British colony, never hesitating to use force to subdue warring tribes in the process of bring peace and justice to the region he administered.

It was a mission to protect miners in the Yodda Valley goldfields that resulted in the establishment of the Kokoda patrol post.

Monckton’s task was to investigate the disappearance without trace of 50 miners walking to Yodda from Moresby.

Bleached bones were found scattered about in the jungle, but Monckton found no evidence of cannibalism.

He also didn’t stop attacks on miners, as others vanished later in similar circumstances.

Some contemporaries admired Monckton as a “fearless fighting man”; others deplored his readiness to use a gun

In 1906 Monckton made the first recorded ascent of Mt Albert Edward, at 3,990 metres one of Papua New Guinea’s highest peaks.

He also had a mountain named after him – Mt Monckton in Oro Province, estimated elevation 2,561 metres.

It was this same area and on the same track Monckton tramped that was the scene for the second of Australia’s most memorable military exploit – Kokoda.

Going to war shorta everything

At the outbreak of the war with Japan in 1941, the Australia was Shorta - shorta money, shorta ships, shorta planes and shorta trained soldiers.

Australia had sent 20,000 troops to North Africa to fight the Germans and Italians (3,000 were killed) and, while recruitment and training were proceeding apace, there were scant numbers left to deploy when the Japanese attack on New Guinea began in January 1942.

Sergeant Bruce Kingsbury VC charges the Japanese line (Painting by Rob Barclay)

But Australia had to defend its two northern colonies of Papua and New Guinea.

So a makeshift force comprising Melbourne’s 39th militia and Sydney’s 53rd militia sailed for Port Moresby and in June 1942 joined the Papuan Infantry Battalion to form Maroubra Force.

It was said that the Australian units were so ragtag that some were forcibly signed up on Sydney’s streets and frogmarched to a waiting ship.

Most of these militia men were under 20 years old and derided as ‘chocolate soldiers’ by the battle-hardened AIF troops who later joined them from North Africa, brought home as the Japanese Imperial Army with little resistance ploughed across New Guinea.

Arriving from North Africa and the Middle East, the troops were dressed in lightweight khaki and had only basic weaponry.

But the Australian commander, General Thomas Blamey, seemed unconcerned that they froze in the rain and were easy targets in the jungle.

And the Japanese weren’t the only enemy; dysentery and malaria were also to claim many casualties.

Landing of the Japanese marines at Gona with Japan's South Seas Force commander, Lieutenant General Tomitaro Horii, and his horse Colonel Tojo  (Painting by Rob Barclay)

On 23 July 1942, not long after Maroubra Force had been formed in Port Moresby, 2,000 crack Japanese troops landed at Gona, about 200 km from Moresby over the Owen Stanley Range and the Kokoda Trail.

The Japanese troops were equipped with specialised heavy jungle weaponry and heir green-camouflage made them almost invisible.

As they advanced, the Australians fell back, torching Kokoda – but later retaking the town.

Although knowing their troops were surrounded, headquarters in Brisbane initially refused to airdrop supplies, forcing the garrison to be abandoned again.

When the commanders came to their senses two days later, it was the Japanese who were grateful for the parachuted supplies. It had been their turn to reoccupy Kokoda.

That bloody, muddy Kokoda trail

Corporal Sanopa of the Papuan Infantry Battalion (Painting by Rob Barclay)

Corporal Sanopa of Buna led 75 troops to safety in the black jungle night. He was awarded the Loyal Service Medal.

His ex-police Papuan Infantry Battalion, numbering 300, officered mainly by former patrol officers, won one Military Cross, 4 Military Medals, one Distinguished Service Order, and 24 Loyal Service medals.

Sergeant Bruce Kingsbury charged into the advancing Japanese, killing 30 with his Bren gun and scattering the rest. A sniper shot him.

He was later posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, and is remembered with a monument at the start of Mt Dandenong’s ‘1,000 Kokoda Steps’ walk.

Generals Blamey and Douglas MacArthur in Brisbane wondered why the Kokoda Gap wasn’t sealed off for good. Apparently nobody told them the Gap was three miles wide.

There was much suffering and many unnecessary casualties caused by trying to run the campaign by remote control from Brisbane.

The track soon degenerated into glutinous mud – some of the exhausted troops collapsed, became trapped and had to be helped out.

Any attempt to bypass the mess by struggling through the adjacent impenetrable undergrowth met with disorientation and myriads of ferocious biting insects.

Maggots were routinely left in soldiers’ wounds so they could eat away the putrid flesh.

Dysentery was rife, causing the troops to rip off the back of their shorts in an effort to ignore the constant streams of blood and mucus, their underpants long since discarded in an attempt to avoid the maddeningly-itchy groin fungus.

Manically scratching insect bites caused gaping tropical ulcers that could only be cured by antibiotics, which had just been invented and were unavailable, or scraping out. Untreated these ulcers would eat their way to the bone.

Feet and boots rotted in the steamy conditions. It was not uncommon for half the foot tissue to come off when boots were finally removed.

Virulent skin funguses were made worse by troops too exhausted to wash regularly in streams.

The incessant cold rain caused pneumonic complaints, impossible to treat in the field. The virtual starvation of troops in the nine-week campaign caused massive weight loss -  an average 76 kilo soldier lost 30 kilos.

One soldier had most of his leg blown off. The stump was tied with dressings and a copra sack, and crawled for three days refusing all help. “There are many worse off than me,” he said. He was tough and he survived.

Imita Ridge was the final titanic struggle. The troops who had been condemned to fight along the Kokoda Trail threw everything at the Japanese in this initially indecisive battle.

Fortune favours the brave

So three months later, in September 1942, the Australians’ luck changed.

By now the capacity of the Japanese force was failing because over-stretched supply lines had robbed it of munitions and other supplies. Some units were starving.

The Japanese were ordered to withdraw and establish defensive positions on Papua’s north coast.

The Australians harried them all the way back across the Owen Stanleys. Cannibalism was suspected amongst some Japanese.

A much reduced force made it back to Gona; few of the troops ever saw Japan again.

And during the retreat, the commander of the South Seas Force that had taken New Guinea, Lieutenant General Tomitaro Horii was drowned when a raft he was using to get to Gona faster was swept out to sea.

It is said that many of his staff and his prized stallion, ‘Colonel Tojo’, had already drowned trying to cross the Kumasi River.

A campaign desperate & vicious

Kokoda Memorial Monument, Ferntree Gully, Victoria (Photo - Graeme Saunders)

The Kokoda campaign came at heavy cost to combatants and non-combatants alike.

Some 625 Australians were killed, 1,600 wounded and more than 4,000 were afflicted with disease. More than 150 Papua New Guineans died as members of the Papuan Infantry Battalion or as porters along the Kokoda Track.

The toll on the Japanese invaders was much worse – over 10,000 died.

Of the 550 Australians in the 2/14^th Battalion, only 73 remained. And Melbourne’s 39th militia, which had done such magnificent work but had been heavily criticised by General Blamey, was disbanded with no recognition or battle honours.

Only seven officers and 25 other ranks remained of the original 1,666 members. The primeval tropical rainforest and its diseases had accounted for as many casualties as combat.

Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner was awarded the DSO and Military Cross for turning the mainly teenage boys into an effective fighting force.

And it is recognised that the campaign could have been lost without the help of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels. That is a debt that can never be repaid.

And a brief return to the present

These days, enterprising villagers have turned the endless stream of Kokoda pilgrims into a lucrative cottage industry, with many comfort stops and rest houses along the way.

The track has been upgraded, although not nearly enough and with little regard to facilities as Captain Charlie Lynn has often observed to deaf bureaucratic ears.

At every landmark along the 96 km track, the guides these days provide harrowing accounts of the detail of war and suffering.

Obliging porters, descendants in spirit if not in bloodline of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, carry backpacks, and offer piggyback rides across the many streams.

War cemetery, Bomana near Port Moresby

A recent pilgrim reported that those trekkers tired of the sweaty trudging and huffing and puffing, can - by making a substantial donation – be borne triumphantly along the track like medieval potentates in makeshift sedan chairs.

Back then, wounded soldiers crawled along that track. But this is the 21st century, and the real Kokoda was 80 years ago.