Kokoda Day Service

Kokoda Track Memorial Walkway - Concord, NSW

Eighty‑four years ago today, the men of the 2/31st Battalion, commanded by Major General George Vasey, raised the Australian flag over the township of Kokoda, marking the most significant moment in the conclusion of more than three months of fighting along the Kokoda Track.

In our nation's history, never before and never since have so many Australians directly fought in the defence of Australia.                                                              

When theJapanese forces first landed on the north coast of Papua New Guinea on the 21st of July in 1942, they were met by the Australians of the Maroubra Force. Raw recruits. People who were citizen soldiers. In today's parlance, reservists. Men who, against the odds and against a much more professional and veteran opponent, were responsible for one of those rare moments in the history of war, where a glorious display of the human spirit disrupted the fundamental maths of war. 

Because by every calculation of the Japanese, their forces should have moved more easily, faster, south on their mission to capture Port Moresby from the land. An objective which, had they achieved it, would have completely changed Australia's relationship to the war and deeply imperiled our nation. 

But the resistance by those extraordinary men, led by the famed 39th Battalion, gained time for the reinforcements of our own professional veteran force – those soldiers who had been recalled by John Curtin from the Middle East, who arrived on the Track more than a month later. 

In places like Kokoda, Isurava, Imita Ridge: places which, until you see them, their mountainous, stark habitat seems to completely belie the idea that they could be a battlefield. In those places, the courageous valour of those Australians denied the Imperial Japanese from ever setting foot in Port Moresby. 

This battle occurred in the most consequential year in our nation's history: 1942. A year which began with the fall of Singapore on the 15th of February. A week later, the bombing of Darwin. On the 17th of March, the arrival in Australia of General Douglas MacArthur, having fled the Philippines. And a year in which John Curtin made contest with Winston Churchill to see our soldiers return from the Middle East to defend our homeland. And in this was illuminated a difference in foreign policy, a fundamental difference in the national interest of Australia from the United Kingdom, which saw the passage of the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act on the 9th of October that year. The true moment of our independence from the United Kingdom, the true birth date of our nation. 

But in that most consequential year, the most significant military victory occurred on this day. And while the war would continue for another three years, after the 3rd of November 1942, our moment of greatest peril had passed. 

And so, today, we remember the 8,000 Australians who fought on that Track. The tens of thousands of Papua New Guineans, those angels who helped them. And the 625 Australians who lost their lives who are so beautifully remembered here at the Kokoda Track Memorial Walkway. 

Lest we forget.

ENDS