Читать книгу Attack on the Black Cat Track - Max Carmichael - Страница 9

Chapter 2

A happy path to disaster

When you play, play hard; when you work, don’t play at all.1

It took around sixty-two years after the end of World War II for Australians to rekindle any interest in the Black Cat Track. The genesis of this occurred during the 1980s, when Australians began to take more interest in their nation’s military history. Initially, the focus was on ANZAC Day and Gallipoli, but gradually it developed, eventually including the New Guinea campaigns of World War II.

The Kokoda Track became the main focus for many younger Australians, who felt an almost spiritual need to walk that particular track’s entire length and witness the conditions under which the campaign had been fought. Kokoda walkers became so frequent that a major tourist industry developed around them, but in the process the authenticity of many of the track’s battlefields was eroded.

The Black Cat Track, on the other hand, was infrequently visited, and as a result the battlefields along the track had remained largely untouched since 1942. At various points along the track, unexploded ordnance, weapons and equipment, not to mention skeletal remains of unknown soldiers, are in evidence. The number of local people killed or injured by the flotsam and jetsam of war is unknown, but if the stories told to lone adventurer Shredder are true, there must be a few. Shredder walked the track in 2012, and while at the village of Skin Diwai he was shown a munitions dump, where hundreds of bullets, grenades and bombs lay in the jungle where they had been left during a World War II battle. Local people told him they gathered discarded mortar bombs to throw on the fire, which made an explosion, to celebrate Christmas.2 This ‘original’ state of the battlefields, plus the reputation of the track as a particularly challenging trek, provided the more adventurous visitor with an alternative to the Kokoda Track.

Trekking is vastly different from hiking or simply walking. The trekker seeks to explore, as well as to enjoy the scenery and associated physical activity. It frequently takes place in areas of unspoiled wilderness, where the trekker often faces adverse weather conditions, and physical and mental challenges, which when overcome promotes a euphoric feeling and a feeling of freedom.

Freedom, however, can be relative to the amount of money and time an individual can afford to spend in order to exercise personal liberty, and trekking is an expensive pastime. Costs involved in pursuing this leisure activity are many and varied. Many trekkers prefer to use the auspices of a tour operator to manage the route and administration of a trek. Costs of joining a tour operator’s trek along the Black Cat Track range from around $3000, to around $7000 for ‘glamping’.3 Another major cost is dictated by the fact that most trek locations are remote and often involve considerable travel — international airfares are sufficient to preclude many would-be trekkers from participating. In addition to these costs, the price of purchasing the appropriate clothing and equipment required to enable a trek to be undertaken in relative comfort may be considerable. For example, major items such as a waterproof jacket, a sleeping bag, walking boots and a backpack may cost around $300 each. It is therefore not surprising to find that most trekkers are from the developed world, and that their numbers include many Australians. As the costs involved represent many thousands of dollars more than most citizens of a Third World country might expect to earn in a lifetime, it is unsurprising that few of them join a trek as a form of recreation.

The first commercial trek along the Black Cat Track took place in 2005 and was led by Pam Christie of PNG Trekking Adventures. Up to 10 September 2013, PNG Trekking Adventures led approximately eight treks a year along the track, with an average trekking group size of six, plus a supporting team of porters of around eighteen to twenty men. In addition to PNG Trekking Adventures, other tour operators such as Tropic Tours and Adventure Professionals began to use the track, resulting in around fifty treks a year traversing the track. There have also been a number of independent adventurers, generally one or two trekkers in the company of a single guide.

A major problem for a viable Black Cat Track trekking industry was that the original track was too tough. The steepness of the mountain sides, the numerous landslides and dangerous river crossings severely limited the category of trekker able to negotiate the track to the younger, extremely fit trekker. In an effort to make the track accessible to a wider clientele base, most tour operators began to use an alternative route, known as Skin Diwai, or ‘War Track’. This route avoids some of the most geographically dangerous sections of the original Black Cat Track, and commences about an hour’s drive from Wau at a place known as Biaweng. From this start point the track initially pushes through forests of kunai grass, following an ever upward trajectory, before entering dense jungle. It then becomes a testing pathway, climbing through the jungle, crossing a clearing called Banis Donki, then re-entering the jungle and climbing to a final zenith of just over 2000 metres above sea level. Then it is down and on to the village of Skin Diwai, the total distance covered at this stage being approximately eighteen kilometres.

Most trekkers stay overnight at Skin Diwai, before travelling on down the mountain side a further fourteen kilometres to the village of Godogasul. After Godogasul the track crosses the valley floor to the next village, Mubo, a further five kilometres. Then it’s uphill again for six kilometres to New Camp. After climbing a lower mountain range of a mere 800 odd metres above sea level, the next stop is eight kilometres on, at the village of Komiatum. From here the track crosses the coastal plain, and after a further eight kilometres finally reaches its end at the village of Salamaua. On some treks this last stage is travelled by raft along the San Francisco River, allowing the trekker to arrive in style on the Salamaua beach.

This was, in fact, the plan for the September 2013 trek. However, regardless of the means of travel for the last leg, it will have taken the trekker five to six days to complete the whole journey. The stages of the track are manageable, but it is certainly a journey that is not for the faint hearted, nor the inexperienced bushwalker.

Aside from the natural beauty of the track and the World War II history, a major tourist attraction is the local people and their culture. While generally friendly, the people of the Black Cat Track are as raw and as tough as the place where they live. By any standard they are desperately poor. They follow a subsistence lifestyle, where the major daily activities are maintaining their village huts, hunting and fishing, tending native vegetable gardens and the care of livestock, particularly pigs. Many of them lack a basic education and their contact with the world beyond their traditional lands is limited. In many ways, life along the Black Cat Track resembles a lost Eden and visiting there is to travel back through the ages to another time. The people have a complex belief system, where the physical and the spiritual worlds are inexorably, often magically, intertwined. The health and wellbeing of the community is seen as dependent upon respect being paid to the spirits and totems of the land. This belief system has often led to complications in addressing seemingly trivial disputes, particularly if witchcraft is suspected to be at play — for an accused witch or sorcerer, the consequences may well be fatal.

Most resources held within the community are shared, with the main asset of prime cultural importance being the land. The traditional association of each tribe or clan to a particular area of the land is extremely complex and stretches back through millennia. Traditional ownership of that land extends to all that lives or grows upon the land — people, domestic and wild animals and birds, crops and natural flora are all subject to this proprietorship, and this association is jealously guarded.

At the Wau end of the track the land is owned by the Biangai people, while at the Salamaua end the land is owned by the Bong people. However, the largest tract of traditional lands crossed by the track is situated between the Biangai and Bong lands and is owned by the Iwal people. In this the Black Cat Track itself is a complicating factor, as various points of it crosses these traditional tribal lands. Visitors, including trekking parties moving along the track, are obliged to acknowledge the traditional owners, a process that generally includes payment for the right to cross their lands. Attempts to ignore this process do not go unchallenged.

To some outsiders the traditional communities along the track may appear to be wild and lawless. This is not the case. The people of the Black Cat Track are subject to the same laws and regulations as every other citizen of PNG. However, powerful local social mores are enforced by a system of traditional law that, so far as the local people are concerned, takes precedence over the modern laws and regulations of the PNG National Government and the local Morobe Province Council. The traditional law is harsh and often deadly, but it has maintained order of a kind that the local people see as appropriate. Based on ‘payback’ and revenge, traditional laws allow the wronged party to seek retribution through violence or payment of an appropriate kind. Nor is the perpetrator of a crime held to be the only person responsible or liable to compensate the victim. Close relatives and even friends of the perpetrator may also be held to account, often with tragic results. Sometimes retribution breeds further retaliation, and blood feuds lasting for decades have resulted from the application of the law of payback. To the traditional owners of these lands every person within their boundaries is subject to their law. This is not a stance with which PNG authorities or the tour operators concur. However, common sense would suggest that a visitor should observe local custom in an area where the nearest law enforcement agency is the traditional community.

It was this dangerous and exotic world that in 2013 eight middle-aged Australian men chose to visit. Pete Stevens, Glen Reiss, Jon Hill, Zoltan Maklary, Steven Ward, Rod Clarke, Gary Essex and Nick Bennett, each for his own particular reason, had committed to walk the Black Cat Track. As a technically difficult trek, the Black Cat Track presented these men with an additional physical trial, as their ages ranged from forty-six to sixty-seven, slightly older than the optimum age for tackling such a challenge.

Aside from the desire to trek the Black Cat Track, the group had much in common. Unlike the people of the culture they planned to visit, they were educated, had secure well-paid employment, and they enjoyed a relatively high standard of living. They also shared a keen interest in military history, particularly of the World War II campaigns in New Guinea. However, for all that, they were a diverse group. Two lived in north Queensland, the other six in Victoria. Five of the men had a background of military service, another in agriculture and farm management. One was an accountant and one a former policeman-turned-life-coach. Six of the group had some experience in trekking, but only one of these, Pete Stevens, had any first-hand knowledge of the Black Cat Track.

A nuggetty sixty-two-year-old with a no-nonsense attitude and a determination to get things done, Pete Stevens had been born in the UK but spent the first ten years of his life in Malaysia, where his father was serving as an Army officer. Later, the family migrated to Australia, living in the Adelaide suburb of Netherby. In 1970, after completing secondary school, he entered the Royal Military College Duntroon. During his RMC training in 1972, along with a number of his classmates, Pete walked the Black Cat Track as an adventurous training activity. He remembers the trek as ‘very wild, very adventurous, but probably not as dangerous as it is now’.

Graduating in 1973, Pete was allotted to the Royal Australian Infantry Corps. During a twenty-year career he served in a variety of regimental and staff appointments, including a period of study in the UK at the Royal Military College Shrivenham. In 1993, at the rank of Major, he accepted a voluntary redundancy package and for the next three years worked in a variety of civilian occupations.

Later, Pete secured a position as a Test Engineer at Australian Defence Industries in Bendigo, where he worked on the Bushmaster vehicles made famous during Australia’s commitment to Afghanistan. He then went on to work in various Melbourne-based companies in the research and development field, and as a project manager and consultant. During that time he met and worked with Jon Hill, Glen Reiss and Zoltan Maklary. At around the same time he met and befriended Rod Clarke, who was a member of the same swimming club as Pete’s wife, Dee. In 2010, along with Jon Hill, Pete had walked the Kokoda Track, an experience that had left him with a thirst for more:

Doing the Black Cat was another adventure, I suppose. I’d done Kokoda, a tick in the box, and the fact that Jon and I had done it reasonably, not easily mind, it’s an arduous walk, but we were looking for something a little bit more challenging, something a little bit more remote but still tied to military history. So the Black Cat was an obvious candidate.4

Jon Hill was another expat Brit who went on to serve in the Australian Army. He has been described by his friends as a ‘happy non-whinging pom’ and others as a quiet and cultured man. Raised in South West England, Jon was encouraged by his father to develop an early interest in the outdoors and bushwalking. At the age of eighteen, on attaining his A Levels and completing a four-day hike across Dartmoor and Exmoor, Jon migrated to Australia, where in 1983 he enlisted in the Australian Army. He was selected to attend the Officer Cadet School, Portsea, and on graduation he was allotted to the Royal Australian Artillery, where he served in regimental postings associated with artillery.

In 1993, Jon deployed with Australian forces on Operation SOLACE to Somalia, during which time he provided a liaison service between the Military and Non-Government Organisations. After attending the Australian Command and Staff College, and a promotion to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, Jon served in a variety of staff and project management appointments. In October 2004, he resigned from the Army to become a Public Servant within Defence, and later moved to the private sector, where he continued to employ his project management skills.

At various times during his Army service Jon had worked with Glen Reiss, a relationship that continued when the two men worked at the road toll company, Transurban, in Melbourne. It was there that he met Pete Stevens and Zoltan Maklary.

Jon had a particular interest in military history. He had studied the World War II Kokoda Track campaign, and in 2010, with Pete Stevens, had walked the length of that track. That walk had germinated a desire in the two men to experience more of history, and after considerable research they chose the Black Cat Track as their next trekking objective.

Another former Army officer in the group was forty-seven-year-old Glen Reiss. Glen grew up in the central Victorian town of Bendigo. In 1985 he joined the Army, and like Jon Hill was selected to attend Officer Cadet School, Portsea. However, that year as a result of an Army restructure the Portsea school was closed and its students transferred to RMC Duntroon, from where Glen graduated in December 1986. Allocated to the Royal Australian Army Ordnance Corps, he served in numerous logistic appointments until July 1999, when he resigned from the Army at the rank of Major to take up a management position with a legal firm. Since then he worked in a variety of consultant and project management roles, including at Transurban where he worked with Jon Hill and Pete Stevens. A keen outdoors person and military history enthusiast, Glen had intended to walk the Kokoda Track with Jon and Pete. However, a knee injury forced his withdrawal from that trek. Missing out on that trek had been a bitter disappointment to him, so when the idea of a Black Cat Track trek was raised he quickly agreed to go.

Employment at Transurban brought the three former Army officers in contact with former RAAF officer Zoltan Maklary. The four men established a firm friendship, and when Jon, Pete and Glen decided to walk the Black Cat Track they convinced Zoltan to join them.

Zoltan grew up in Melbourne and was educated at Camberwell Grammar School. At the age of nineteen he left home to study Aero Engineering at Sydney University. In the final year of his course he joined the RAAF as an undergraduate. During his RAAF career he worked on projects involving the F-111 and F-18 aircraft, and undertook a two-year Master of Science course at Cranfield in the United Kingdom. In 1991, Zoltan resigned from the RAAF with the rank of Squadron Leader and accepted an appointment with Rockwell International in Los Angeles. On returning to Australia he took up a position with Transurban. He recalls the circumstances that resulted in his meeting the three former Army officers:

It was around 2000 when I was building a team at Transurban. Glen was the first to join me. He came in as a contractor and then, at Glen’s suggestion, Jon came in and did an interview, and a few weeks after that he joined us. Then a little later, once again at Glen’s suggestion, Peter joined us.

For the next three years we all worked in the one team. We had a strong relationship at work and a lot of camaraderie. I suppose ex-military people have a lot in common and you tend to be able to mix it up pretty well and have fun.5

Zoltan was not your typical outdoorsy person. At the age of fifty-four, he had never been trekking and was initially somewhat coy when it came to committing to the Black Cat trek idea:

It would have been a good twelve months before that when the topic first came up. Jon and Pete had done Kokoda beforehand and they were talking about wanting to do something similar with a military flavour, you know — Pete in particular is into the military history side of things so the Black Cat came up, and so yeah, it probably took me, I don’t know, a good two or three months for me to come around to the idea …6

At the other end of the country, in the Far North Queensland town of Mackay, Nick Bennett and Steve Ward had also made a decision to trek the Black Cat Track. They had reached this conclusion in isolation from those in Victoria, but their motivation was similar. Both had an interest in military history, although Nick’s main interest was to experience PNG culture. Both men were used to working and living in the bush.

Born in New Zealand in 1957, Nick Bennett grew up in Rotorua’s notorious Ford Block public housing estate. Through a combination of quick thinking and luck he survived the experience and grew up to work in many different roles. He had been a police officer working in diplomatic protection, and worked as a trawlerman and a shark fisherman. He had been a truck driver, and trained safari guides for tours in the deserts of Central Australia.

In 2005, Nick’s professional career as a facilitator, development manager and management consultant took a sharp deviation. He used his considerable experience to enter the field of Executive Performance coaching when he, with his wife Rowena, set up their coaching business, Minds Aligned. However, while he led an interesting, if somewhat unconventional lifestyle, he was unfortunate to suffer several health issues.

His approach in addressing these health issues was characteristically different, and in 2006, in an effort to be mentally and physically prepared for a medical treatment program, he walked the Kokoda Track. It was during that trek he first heard of the Black Cat Track, and it instantly appealed to him, but it would be seven years before he would have the opportunity to take on the new trek:

Life events got in the way, and each year when I would start to plan some other thing would interfere. A lot to do with family and the death of my parents, one in NZ and the other in the UK. Then I had a massive angina attack in November 2011, which resulted in my having a stent fitted in January 2012, which knocked me about a bit.7

Nick would be further ‘knocked about’ in March 2013, when he suffered a heart attack. Nevertheless, he remained determined to continue with his plans regarding the Black Cat:

I had spoken of the track for all of that time, and at the end of 2012 I committed to doing it in September of 2013. I felt my integrity was at stake if I failed to do it. In preparing for it I invited over twenty-three of my friends who I respected, guys that I wanted to have an adventure with, to participate. But apart from Steve Ward, none of the others took it up, telling me I was nuts …8

When the Victorian-based trekkers finally met Steve Ward, the first thing that struck them was his massive calf muscles and his tattoos. At the age of forty-six, Steve Ward was the youngest member, and the second Queenslander, in the trekking group. Another former soldier, Steve had joined the Army in 1984 at the tender age of sixteen, as an Army Apprentice. After graduation he was allocated to the Corps of Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, and completed a further fourteen years of service.

On leaving the Army, Steve used his military skills to gain employment in a calibration workshop, before moving into the totally unrelated field of hospitality. He became the owner and operator of a Gloria Jean’s coffee house. Over time, he and his wife Merryn developed this enterprise, eventually opening a second Gloria Jean’s coffee house, before selling both of these facilities and opening their own independent espresso bar. In fact, it was through his coffee house that Steve came to join the trek. Early in 2013, Nick Bennett had popped in for a brew and the two had chatted about the Black Cat. Steve Ward:

I knew that he had recently had a heart attack and was on the road to recovery. He had said to me a few years previous that he was interested in doing the Black Cat, and I said when he decided to do it I would go with him. So I stuck by my word and we started training about seven months out from the trek departure.9

Rod Clarke was a late addition to the Melbourne-based group. A friend of Pete Stevens and swimming coach of Pete’s wife Dee, he was asked to join the group in February 2013. Initially, he had concerns regarding the cost of the trek, but on further consideration he agreed to join. He had always enjoyed camping and an outdoor lifestyle, and as a young man this had led him to a career in agriculture and employment in New Guinea:

I had a passion for farming and so my aunt suggested I go to Dookie Agricultural College, which I did from 1964 to 1966, and gained my Dookie Diploma of Agriculture. From 1967 to 1973 I worked as a Rural Development Officer for the Department of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries, in the then Territory of Papua and New Guinea. I started off in Laiagam in the far west of the Western Highlands, then moved to lonely Margarima in the Southern Highlands. I spent my last three years in Mount Hagen, back in the Western Highlands, where I was both the district and the local Rural Development Officer.10

In 1973, Rod returned to Australia and worked briefly for the firm Economic Wool Producers as a wool sales representative, before accepting a position as a Plant Pathologist with the Victorian Department of Agriculture, where he worked from 1974 until 2001. During 2001 he took an early retirement, and for three years filled his time competing in triathlete events. This diversion from work ended in 2007 when he returned to employment, working part-time for Envirotechniques, a company that specialises in Bush Management projects.

Rod continued his interest in sport and in keeping fit through swimming and coaching for the Doncaster Dolphins Masters Swimming Club, and the YMCA’s Aquarena adult squads at the Doncaster pool. At the age of sixty-seven, Rod was the elder statesman of the trekking group, a fact his younger Victorian-based companions took delight in reminding him. During preparation training for the trek, he was able to demonstrate he was arguably one of the fittest. He was also one of the better informed on issues regarding PNG:

I’d been a bit of a student of Papua New Guinea. I’ve collected PNG stamps, I’ve got shelves full of books on the place, and the people I know up there ring me all the time — I’ve become more confident over the years in speaking pidgin, not only face-to-face but over the phone, and reading it. So this trip was going to be really exciting for me; I was looking forward to it.11

The final member of the trekking group was forty-nine-year-old Gary Essex. Originally from the Victorian town of Yarrawonga, on completing school he attended the University of Melbourne, where he gained a Bachelor of Commerce in 1985. He commenced work with the firm Coopers & Lybrand in January 1985 as an auditor, progressing to the role of audit manager by 1990, and in 1991 became a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia. In 2000 he was admitted as partner in the Albury Wodonga accounting practice of Johnsons MME.

In his younger days Gary played a lot of sport, but on retiring from competitive sport he found he missed the activity. He began to search for another outlet that would hold his interest and maintain a healthy level of physical fitness. Trekking filled this need, and in 2010 he and his brother Trevor walked the Kokoda Track. Gary enjoyed the trek immensely and found that it triggered another interest, that of military history. The tour guide on that occasion was Pam Christie of PNG Trekking Adventures. On returning to Australia, Gary found he was yearning for another PNG adventure, so he contacted Pam, seeking her advice:

I was interested in doing another trek and Pam mentioned that there were seven guys down to do the Black Cat. I had heard about the Black Cat Track and thought that it would be exactly what I was looking to do. So after doing some research, including seeing that Federal Parliamentarians Jason Clare and Scott Morrison as well as a Channel Nine camera crew had recently walked the track, I signed up.12

At this stage Gary had not met any of the other members of the trekking group. Nevertheless, he embraced the idea totally and began to enthusiastically prepare.

And so the trekkers had committed themselves to the September trek. While each member of the group might claim that adventure, cultural interest and military history as reasons why they had made this commitment, there was possibly another motive common to this group that set them apart from younger people who trek the Black Cat. This motive was articulated by Glen Reiss:

I think as you go through stages of your life. You have been so busy and you feel like you have to work for various reasons and have to work really hard. Then one day you suddenly realise you’ve got to enjoy life and you can’t say, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’ There comes a time where you sort of say, ‘Oh no, I really want to do this and I’m going to make time and I’m going to do it with people that I can share it with.’ Sometimes when you go away for work or business or whatever, you spend a lot of time travelling with people that you don’t really know and are never going to see again, and these are like four guys that for the last six or eight years I’ve constantly come across and had beers with, and so it’s just a mid-life crisis perhaps. Or maybe it’s just time, a realisation when you sort of mature a bit that you’ve got to do things, otherwise you get to a stage that you can’t and you can’t say you didn’t have a chance because you make your decisions and you make your chances, and so you just do it.13

Having reached the decision to trek the Black Cat, the eight contenders were faced with deciding the method of conducting the trek that best suited their individual needs. There was no thought of conducting an independent trek of the track, so various tour operators who offered treks along the Black Cat were carefully researched. For Gary Essex, his previous experience with Port Moresby-based PNG Trekking Adventures resulted in his choice to use the same tour operator for this trek. The research conducted by the others led to the same conclusion. The trek the eight men booked for was to be conducted in September 2013.

PNG Trekking Adventures was owned and operated by expat New Zealanders Pam Christie and Mark Hitchcock. Pam was an experienced and well-respected trek leader who had led tours throughout PNG, including the Kokoda and Black Cat tracks. Mark was an efficient manager who employed well-tested and effective management procedures. PNG Trekking Adventures had two proud boasts. The first was that they employed only experienced staff, and the second was that they enjoyed a good relationship with the local people in the areas they trekked.

Having experienced staff and porters ensures the tour operator’s clients receive first-class service throughout their trekking experience. The porters’ task is to ensure the trekkers see the best the environment has to offer by the safest route, and that they enjoy the experience without the hardship of carrying their equipment and food. When working in support of a trek, porters often carry loads in excess of forty kilograms, walk barefoot and have little other than a plastic poncho for protection against the rain. They carry tentage, cooking utensils, food, first-aid equipment, and many other miscellaneous items. Some of the porters specialise as personal porters, acting as a trekker’s individual adviser and carrying the trekker’s personal backpacks.

Employment as a porter for a trek, or performing cultural ceremonies for the benefit of tourists, is for many the only way to gain additional purchasing power to buy extras that mean the difference between some comfort and the harshness of poverty. The extra money can also provide food security for a village, removing the pressure from those who must strive to provide sufficient food for their families on a daily basis.

However, in 2013 it was well known within PNG’s trekking industry that the communities along the Black Cat Track were inexperienced and untrained in dealing with tourists, and as a result provided a less-than-optimum service. To overcome this perceived failing, it had become common practice for tour operators to limit their recruitment of porters, particularly of personal porters, to men with proven experience. While this practice made perfect business sense, in a society where everything is shared it was culturally inappropriate, and was the catalyst for tension and discontent along the track. It also placed the men from various other traditional lands in the insidious position of breaking traditional law, in that they were making gain while on another local person’s land. This was by no means entirely the fault of PNG Trekking Adventures, but a situation was developing along the track which meant their claim of a good relationship with the local people was becoming questionable.

There was an additional issue related to PNG Trekking Adventures’ staffing policy claims. Pam Christie, the regular leader for the tour operator’s Black Cat treks, was unable to lead the September trek, and a new PNG Trekking Adventures employee, Christy King, had been appointed. This appointment would seem to be a direct contradiction of PNG Trekking Adventures’ staffing policy, for while Christy had considerable trekking experience and knowledge of the Black Cat Track, she had never before managed a full trek.

Christy’s other credentials, however, were impressive. Originally from Bathurst in New South Wales, thirty-eight-year-old Christy King was a registered nurse by profession. She had married into an old colonial family that had stayed on in PNG after the 1975 independence. The family operated the largest chain of pharmacies in PNG, plus a string of grocery stores in various parts of the country. By 2013, Christy, her husband Daniel and their two children had been living in Lae for ten years. During that time Christy had immersed herself in PNG culture, learning to speak pidgin English and becoming familiar with government officials and local people at all levels. In addition to the family home in Lae, the family also maintained a holiday home at Salamaua, the village at the base of the Black Cat Track.

Salamaua is seen by expats living in Lae as a place of refuge. In Lae, because of the high crime rate, they live by necessity behind barbed wire in secure compounds, an existence that can become very trying, particularly for the young. At Salamaua life was far less stressful. No-one locked their houses; children were free to roam the streets and to play with the local kids.

For Christy, Salamaua was also the place from where she began her close relationship with the Black Cat Track, walking it on several occasions and learning all she could about its history and the World War II battles that were fought on and around it. A fitness fanatic, in 2011 Christy took this relationship with the track to a level attained by few when, in preparation for a race along the Kokoda Track, she ran the length of the Black Cat in thirty-two hours.14 Supremely fit, with knowledge of the people, the terrain, the local language and local politics, she was an ideal choice for trek leader.

In spite of Christy’s undoubted ability, PNG Trekking Adventures chose not to advise the September trekkers of her appointment until their clients arrived in PNG. Regardless, the clients had freely chosen PNG Trekking Adventures based on their own research. The tour operator had every reason to believe that the coming trek would be well received along the track, and that their newly appointed trek leader would perform well. It was also reasonable to assume that while the communities along the Black Cat might grumble a bit about outside porters, they would be happy once they were paid for the trek’s visit to their traditional lands. Now was the time to begin preparations.

_________

1 Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, 1901–1909.

2 Shredder, ‘Lost On the Black Cat Track’, Papua New Guinea Adventure Blog, 11 August, 2012, https://shredderinpng.com/2012/08/11/lost-on-the-black-cat-track/.

3 ‘Glamping’ is a word for glamorised camping.

4 Pete Stevens, Australian Story, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2014.

5 Zoltan Maklary, Australian Story, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2014.

6 ibid.

7 Nick Bennett, email to author, 2015.

8 ibid.

9 Steve Ward, Australian Story, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2014.

10 Rod Clarke, Australian Story, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2014.

11 ibid.

12 Gary Essex, Australian Story, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2014.

13 Glen Reiss, Australian Story, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2014.

14 Most trekkers take six days to complete the Black Cat Track.