Following in their footsteps – Students prepare for Kokoda odyssey
In 2022 Craig Guthrie received a phone call from Tim Bull, his local member of Parliament, asking him if he wanted to walk the Kokoda Track.
There was only one catch – he would have to be ready in two weeks.
Craig had served in the Army for eight years, including a tour of East Timor, but had left in 2008 and by his own admission was not in the best shape.
“I was very unfit,” Craig laughed. “But I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity.”
The trip to Kokoda was part of a program that Tim Bull had been co-ordinating with other Victorian members of Parliament for a number of years.
“I first got involved in 2015 when I went over with Gary Blackwood, the member for Narracan, who organised scholarships for students in his area to do the trek. I decided I wanted to get some scholarships together so kids from my area could go as well.”
The program has continued to grow as Tim Bull took on overall co-ordination and now dozens of students from around regional Victoria take part every year.
The students’ scholarships are sponsored by RSL Sub-Branches and some other businesses and cover the total costs of going on the trek including flights and support on route. Each student also gets presented the biography of one soldier who served on the Kokoda track. The idea is to personalise the story of Kokoda, so the students can understand it was just young people not much older than themselves who were in the jungles of New Guinea as the last obstacle between the Japanese and Australia.
Even for veterans like Craig Guthrie walking the track has proven to be an eye-opening experience.
“My sister, who is a Navy veteran, had done it the year before,” Craig said. “So, I knew a bit about it, but I wasn’t prepared for what a life changing event it is, not only for the students but the adults who accompany them.”
Craig was a last-minute inclusion after another member of the party withdrew and Tim needed a Second in Charge to supervise the students. The students on the 2022 trip were being sponsored by Bairnsdale RSL and Craig was amazed at some of the history he discovered on the trek.
“I heard a lot about a soldier from Sale called Charlie McCallum who won the Distinguished Conduct Medal while fighting on the Kokoda track,” Craig said. “I thought why doesn’t Sale RSL have a scholarship named after him.”
On his return Craig made it his mission to create a scholarship named after Charlie McCallum so that he would be better remembered in his hometown. He approached Sale RSL who immediately got on board and put up the seven and a half thousand dollars needed for the scholarship.
Incredibly the first person to receive the Charlie McCallum scholarship, in 2024, was Fletcher Dougherty, the great grandnephew of Charlie McCallum.
As part of the application process the candidates must submit a short essay about why they want to attend and then undergo an interview with the selection panel, usually made up of members of the Sub-Branch sponsoring the scholarship.
“You don’t have to be related to someone who served in Kokoda to apply,” said Craig. “But it is so meaningful for the kids when they have that personal connection. In Fletcher’s case he put in a great application and interviewed really well.”
This year Fletcher’s younger brother, Hudson, won the scholarship and will be following in his brother’s footsteps to Kokoda at the end of June to visit the place where his great granduncle served and died.
“My brother said the experience changed his life,” Hudson said. “Hearing what he said I really wanted to go as well and learn more about what my uncle and the other ANZACs went through.”
Hudson is one of thirty-six students from across Victoria taking part in the Kokoda Trek this year. Students from high schools in Mildura, Sale, Bairnsdale, Swan Hill, Wangaratta and Bendigo are but a few that will be taking part in the nine-day trek.
In Wangaratta there are four students taking part this year, all supported by community fundraising put together by Craig Iskov at the local RSL Sub-Branch. One of the scholarships is named after Craig’s own father, Bob Iskov, who served on the Kokoda trek.
“We have commercial sponsors but also just ordinary people from the area who want to contribute,” Craig said. “We have little old women who put twenty dollars in a collection tin at the RSL because it is important to them that the kids understand the history of places like Kokoda.”
For one local student attending this year from Wangaratta, Fern Tucker, doing research on Kokoda led her to discover she was descended from a member of the famous 39th Battalion who for a time stood alone against the Japanese forces advancing along the Kokoda track.
Students taking part in the trek are split into two separate groups and cover the entire Kokoda track, starting at different ends, and passing each other about halfway. Once they have completed the track they hike to a military cemetery where thousands of Australian soldiers are buried.
To prepare for the trek Hudson and other students from Gippsland have been doing hikes through mountainous country around Bairnsdale and Warragul.
“I was already pretty fit,” Hudson said. “But over the last eight weeks I’ve been getting used to walking with the backpack and heavy weights. It’s a bit daunting but I should be OK.”
For students in other parts of the state finding a way to prepare has not been so easy.
In Mildura Courtney Jack is also following an older sibling to Kokoda, her big sister Rhiannon went on the trek last year. For both, finding a place to train for the incredible steep and dense forest of the Kokoda track has not been easy in the flat desert country that surrounds their hometown.
“I’ve been walking up a lot of stairs,” Courtney said. “We’ve done some hikes along the Murray, but I have also been going to the gym a lot to try and build up my leg strength.”
Courtney and Rhiannon are the great granddaughters of Warrant Officer John Lochhead who fought at Kokoda and died in New Guinea. Both received a scholarship named in his honour, sponsored by Mildura RSL.
Courtney is looking to not only get a better understanding of what her great grandfather experienced on the Kokoda track, but she also sees it as an opportunity to get closer to her grandmother.
“Grandma doesn’t talk about her father much,” Courtney said. “But she was only a few months old when he went away to war. I want to be able to tell her about what I saw there so she can also feel closer to him.”
In the first year of its local scholarship Mildura RSL was only a partial sponsor but after seeing the benefits of the program has now providing full scholarships itself. Mildura RSL President Brad McGlashan says the scholarship is a great way to keep the memory of servicemen who served Australia alive in the local community.
“A lot of the students say they can’t wait to come back and tell their local community about what they experienced,” Brad said. “One student was an Army cadet who made a presentation when she got home about the soldier she had been given and what the soldier had gone through. She has gone on to join the Australian defence forces after going on the trek.”
Mildura MP Jade Benham accompanied Courtney’s sister Rhiannon to Kokoda last year and is co-ordinating the trip again in 2026.
“I was with Rhiannon when she visited her great grandfather’s grave,” Jade said. “It was such a special moment because she was the first member of his family to ever visit the grave. Moments like that stay with you forever.”
Courtney says she is looking forward to the experience and has taken on her sister’s advice about the challenges ahead.
“My sister said it really is a mental game as much as physical,” Courtney said. “Rhiannon had a bad knee when she went but even being injured, she had the mental ability to keep going. While I know it will be touch I am preparing myself to just keep going no matter what.”
