Kokoda Track

The Kokoda Trail
Length	96 km (60 mi)
Location	Papua New Guinea
Trailheads	Kokoda / Owers Corner
Use	Walking
Elevation
Highest point	Mount Bellamy, 2,190 m (7,190 ft)
Lowest point	Ua'Ule Creek, 300 m (980 ft)
Hiking details
Trail difficulty	Hard
Season	All
Sights	WWII History, Jungle, Mountains

The Kokoda Trail or Track is a single-file foot thoroughfare that runs 96 kilometres (60 mi) overland – 60 kilometres (37 mi) in a straight line – through the Owen Stanley Range in Papua New Guinea. The track was the location of the 1942 World War II battle between Japanese and Allied – primarily Australian – forces in what was then the Australian territory of Papua.

The track runs from Owers Corner in Central Province, 50 kilometres (31 mi) east of Port Moresby, across rugged and isolated terrain which is only passable on foot, to the village of Kokoda in Oro Province. It reaches a height of 2,190 metres (7,185 ft) as it passes around the peak of Mount Bellamy. The track travels primarily through the land of the Mountain Koiari people.

Hot, humid days with intensely cold nights, torrential rainfall and the risk of endemic tropical diseases such as malaria make it a challenging trek. Hiking the trail normally takes between four and twelve days; the fastest recorded time is 16 hours 34 minutes.

The track was first used by European miners in the 1890s to access the Yodda Kokoda goldfields. Between July 1942 and January 1943, a series of battles, afterwards called the Kokoda Track Campaign, were fought between the Japanese and Australian forces. This action was memorialised in the newsreel documentary Kokoda Front Line!, filmed by cameraman Damien Parer, which won Australia's first Academy Award for its director Ken G. Hall in 1942.

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Wikipedia