Kokoda Movie

The battle that saved Australia in 1942.

The track to hell and back
A film about Kokoda skirts some history but gets the mud right, says D.D. McNicoll
April 07, 2006

THE battle between Australian and Japanese troops that raged back and forth over the Kokoda track in Papua New Guinea in 1942 is etched deeply and permanently into the Australian psyche. Perhaps only the appalling slaughter at Gallipoli almost 30 years previously inhabits a more familiar spot in our national consciousness.

It was the battle that saved Australia from Japanese invasion in World War II - the first time the "invincible" Japanese war machine was stopped and put to flight. It was a feat largely achieved by the once derided "Chocos" - the "chocolate soldiers" of the militia forces who were ordered to PNG in early 1942 because the battle-seasoned soldiers of the 2nd AIF were deployed in the Middle East and North Africa.

So it is remarkable that, until now, no one has produced a feature movie focusing on Kokoda, although any number of scripts have been written and production ventures started.
There has, of course, been a documentary. The fabled Australian cameraman Damien Parer won an Oscar in 1943 for his film, Kokoda Front Line, which first gave the world an idea of the conditions under which men were fighting in PNG.

It also documented the bravery of the locals, the so-called Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, who carried hundreds of injured men back to the safety of Port Moresby.

Since then one of the problems would-be movie makers faced was just how to tell the story. Official war histories of the action are detailed but hardly riveting and most of the blokes who fought through the leech-filled jungle on the teeth-like ridges of the Owen Stanley Ranges never spoke much about their experiences.

Like others of their generation, the survivors came back to Australia and, without the aid of any counselling or debriefing, simply got on with their lives.
Only in the past few years have writers such as former rugby footballer Peter FitzSimons managed to get some of them to open up and describe the savage fighting and appalling conditions faced by both sides.

And in two weeks, just before Anzac Day, the first feature movie about the action will open across the country. Kokoda is the debut feature from director Alister Grierson, who graduated from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School only two years ago.

Grierson and his team don't try to tell the story of the Kokoda campaign. The film focuses on a small patrol that gets cut off from the main Australian force on the Kokoda track by the advancing Japanese and looks at their lives during three days as they struggle to get back.
It won't appeal much to historians but there is enough graphic death and glory to keep all but the most die-hard, Rambo-addicted, shoot-em-up fans happy. What the old Diggers from the 39th Battalion might make of the at times deafening and dramatic musical score is anyone's guess.

The Kokoda campaign began in July 1942 when Japanese troops landed on the north coast of PNG near Buna and Gona. Heavy defeats of the Japanese navy's fleet in the Battle of the Coral Sea and at Midway had shaken the Japanese high command and convinced them they could not take Port Moresby by sea. The Japanese army was ordered to march over the Kokoda track and take Moresby by land.

On a map it looked simple. It is less than 200km from Buna to Port Moresby and the Kokoda "road" was shown in pre-World War II maps as just that. What maps didn't show was that the road was a muddy walking track that went almost vertically up and down the forbidding ridges of the Owen Stanley Ranges. It was so steep in places that on one ascent - near the village of Nauro, half-way between Port Moresby and the village of Kokoda - the Australian Army engineers later cut 3500 steps just to get up one ridge.

It was also cold, wet and very muddy. The Japanese were met by the 39th Australian Infantry Battalion, a Citizens Military Forces unit that had been raised from volunteers in Victoria in 1941 for home defence. The 39th, reinforced with conscripts, was sent to PNG in January 1942 after the area was declared by the government to be a section of the 8th Australian Military District - an official sleight of hand that allowed conscripted soldiers to be used in a war zone.

The Australian forces left Port Moresby on July 7, reached Kokoda on July 15 and advanced to Wairopi and beyond. The Japanese started up the track from Buna on July 21 and by July 24 had driven the defenders back to Wairopi. By July 29 the Japanese had taken Kokoda and the Australians were falling back to Isurava.

It's at about this point that Grierson's movie starts, with 10 soldiers being sent out on patrol to see where the enemy forces are.

Grierson became interested in the Kokoda story after his brother walked the track. He realised he couldn't tell the entire story in a 90-minute film so he came up with a "lost patrol" story and asked John Lonie to write a script. Lonie, whose father fought in PNG, produced a first draft that Grierson says was fantastic. "It had too many characters, so we had to reduce it down," he says.

Second, third and fourth drafts were produced and the movie was away. Grierson, producer Leesa Kahn, director of photography Jules O'Loughlin, sound designer Adrian Bilinsky, composer John Gray and editor Adrian Rostirolla had all met at the AFTRS and worked together on a number of short films, so the machinery was in place. Kokoda was written, financed, shot and distribution set up in less than two years.

Costs and conditions prevented the film being shot in PNG but watching the finished result it is hard to believe it was all filmed in the Gold Coast hinterland: the bits that don't yet have wall-to-wall golf courses. It is muddy and steep enough to be very convincing.
A few things, however, do suggest artistic licence.

The Chocos may not have been as well trained as the troops in the AIF but they certainly would have been taught to care for and handle their weapons more proficiently than Grierson's troops. The haircuts are wrong (presumably young actors don't really want to walk about with an authentic 1940s army haircut) and no self-respecting regimental warrant officer would ever let enlisted men grow scraggy beards: the army's much-feared dry shave would be ordered.

Some of the slang and expressions used are a bit too 2006 and the mid-Pacific accents aren't what might have been heard in rural Victorian schools in the '30s. And almost no one in 1942 had Hollywood-style perfectly even and sparkling white teeth.
But despite these niggles, Kokoda will bring a bit of our history and heritage to a new generation.

Kokoda is released on April 20.