Thread: Kokoda trail - any recommendations?

Did this a number years ago with BACKTRACK travel, did the extra part with Buna and Gona .. Do the whole thing to do it properly.

Read Peter Fitzsimons Tobruk and Kokoda books before I went. Also took a battlefield guide that was brilliant to have with us..

The history is great and so alive as you walk through it. Hire a porter or you'll watch your feet the whole trip instead of the track and views.

It is a humbling experience, on some of the points you'll be looking at bits of firearms, equipment and old ammo live and spent. Trenches only 10s of metres apart facing each other..

I highly recommend doing it. Travel Kokoda to moresby if you can as it ends and you are at town, if you end at Kokoda its it and then you wait for a plane out!!

Every bit of prep you do is worth it on the track!

Thanks Digger. We were definitely planning on taking a tour with an historian. Appreciate the tips.

Mate, Terry Hewitt at Adventure Out runs a good Kokada Trek.

The ONLY people to trek Kokoda with would be "Adventure Kokoda".
Wifey trekked with them a few years back, run by ex military people, & concentrates on the "Battle Track" which is substantially longer than the "normal" track,....all battle sites are explained & there is great interaction with the locals. Google it & see.
Wifey loved it,.....did a lot of training to get herself fit.
Pickles.

a great trip. well worth while.

Here is the link for Adventure Kokoda, so that you can see what they're about. Wifey trekked in 2008.

Adventure Kokoda

Pickles.

Brigade Hill is a very eerie place we had a service there very early in the morning near the still obvious graves from which servicemen were exhumed after the war.

The Kokoda battlefield guide is excellent and water resistant against the humidity. Worth buying.
Field Guide to the Kokoda Track | Kokoda Trail | Book and waterproof trek map

Also if time read the bone man of Kokoda
The Bone Man of Kokoda - Pan Macmillan Australia

We visited the tree stump he hid in during the war... Also a plane wreck of Jap bomber that didn't clear the ridge top near Isurava.. Wouldn't have known it was there without the battlefield guide.

Get quick drying hiking shirts and break your shoes in properly!! Take blister bandaids and lots of energy. Also very worth using a porter.

I did this trip in 2002.

Buy enough cigarettes to shout the porters a couple of times per day and they cant do enough for you. They like the local "Spear" brand which burn for about ten minutes each. Take some Tally Ho papers for when they run out of tailor made fags and resort to their local tobacco. They were rolling it in newspaper but it made terrible smokes. Pocket knives are a good gift to endear them to you.

Climb lots of stairs before you go. I trained by climbing the fire escape stairs at work (16 floors) with a 15 kg pack in my hiking boots for an hour at a time several times a week, for six months. I'd be paying a porter if I went again. I though it was reasonably tough till I met a 77 year old bloke going the other way.