Kokoda

Between July and November 1942, Australian and Japanese soldiers fought a bitter campaign along the Kokoda Trail, which crossed the Owen Stanley Range in Papua. As the Japanese forces advanced south along the trail towards Port Moresby, Australian troops found themselves overwhelmed and forced to withdraw to Imita Ridge by mid-September.
But the attention of senior Japanese commanders was on Guadalcanal, and they ordered their soldiers on the Kokoda Trail back to beachheads at Gona and Buna on Papua’s north coast. The Australians pursed the Japanese back across the mountains and recaptured Kokoda on 2 November.
Throughout the campaign, Australian soldiers fought along the narrow trail, encountering knee-deep mud, steep terrain, crippling heat and humidity, leeches, and a lack of food and supplies. Official Australian photographer Lieutenant Thomas Fisher captured the exhaustion and malnutrition of troops from the 2/27th Battalion as they reached an outpost in Itiki in October 1942, after being out of contact for 13 days.
The battle fought along the Kokoda Trail has come to symbolise the characteristics embodied by Australian soldiers: endurance, courage, sacrifice, and mateship.