The ghosts of Kokoda guided an NRMA team along the same jungle tracks where 4000 diggers died. Jane Grljusich relives the experience

We were 18 average Australians and two New Zealanders about to set off on one of the world’s hardest treks. It was a 10-day journey along the Kokoda Track designed to test our leadership skills and enhance teamwork among NRMA’s new family of businesses – including Thrifty car rental, NRMA Holiday Parks and Adventure World Travel.

At the Bomana War Cemetery in Port Moresby, the stark reality hit home.

They were 40,000 average Australians risking their lives under Japanese fire in rugged and isolated terrain. 

Fighting on the Kokoda Track in 1942 was as desperate and vicious as our troops had encountered anywhere in World War Two. Victory on the track ensured allied bases in northern Australia would not be seriously threatened by an air attack. Australians were terrified at the prospect of invasion and the bases were crucial in the coming counter-offensive against the Japanese.

About 625 Australians were killed along the Kokoda Track and more than 1600 wounded. Casualties caused by sickness exceeded 4000. The cemetery at Bomana contains 3819 Commonwealth burials from the Second World War – 702 of them unidentified.

The Port Moresby Memorial stands behind the cemetery and commemorates almost 750 men from the Australian Army (including local Papua and New Guinea forces), the Australian Merchant Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force, who lost their lives in the operations in Papua and who have no known graves.

We thought we knew what to expect, but nothing can prepare you for the spine-tingling heaviness you feel standing among the graves. It changes you forever.

We were proud to make the NRMA Kokoda Leadership team; they had come proud enough to die for their loved ones and country.

We were kitted out and well supplied; they had not nearly enough food, not nearly enough artillery and nowhere near enough medical support.

The Japanese outnumbered them and were better trained. They risked gunshot wounds, explosive injuries, malaria, starvation, jungle ulcers.

We would go home; their loved ones were left waiting, broken-hearted.

One of the gravestones at Bomana belonged to Basil Lucas, the great uncle of ACT NRMA patrolman Gerard Gibbons. Basil’s grave read VA Lucas, because he’d changed his name so authorities wouldn’t know he was too young to fight. He was killed in battle at Sanananda after surviving the perils of the track. He was only 18.

Gerard was the first person in his family to visit the grave. We watched silently as Gerard pondered the enormous tragedy represented by the white stone standing before him – identical to the 3818 surrounding it.

It was to be a sombre trip.

We walked past the site where fighting first occurred between elements of the Papuan Infantry Battalion and the 39th Australian Infantry Battalion at Awala.

We walked over the Imita Ridge where Australian troops had been able to dig in – the last natural obstacle along the track, a mere 8km from the junction with the road to Port Moresby.

And past where a number of desperate delaying actions were fought as the Australians withdrew along the track.

We crossed Ioribaiwa, the last Japanese stronghold and from where they eventually withdrew. On Brigade Hill, we saw the rows of sticks and rusted wire marking the site of the track’s biggest battle.

We passed Surgeon’s Rock where Butch Bisset died in the arms of his brother Stan, a former Wallaby selected for the Australian rugby team in 1939. Stan had held him for hours, telling him stories and singing ‘Danny Boy’. As we trekked towards Kokoda, it was the songs of our carriers that lifted our spirits and filled our hearts with inspiration.

We held a special ceremony at the war memorial at Isurava, where the four pillars of courage, sacrifice, mateship and endurance stand atop the deep, misty valley below.

We all bowed our heads as Gerard Gibbons led us in a minute of silence for the fallen.

We made our way to Kokoda that day. The end was quieter than any of us had expected, the humility overwhelming. The lessons we’d learnt about the tragedies and pain and suffering on the track engulfed us. It was paralysing.

We were fortunate – 20 staff members of the NRMA family selected out of 122 who had expressed interest in the ‘NRMA 2008 Leadership Program’.

NRMA group CEO Tony Stuart developed the program with leadership consultant Bruce Hayman. It was based on successful candidates meeting strict selection criteria covering fitness levels, initiative, commitment to goal setting and achievement, understanding of and relationship to Kokoda, fund raising for NRMA-designated charities (more than $60,000 was raised) and staff votes.

As a team, we had experienced everything. As a family of businesses, we had forged unbreakable bonds. We’d learnt that leaders were often followers, that teamwork was everything, and that without mateship, someone to give you a hand up, you had nothing.

It also gave us a new understanding of the NRMA motto – helping people.

Open Road January/February 2009