National park rangers from Australia have travelled to Papua New Guinea to help local people maintain the famous Kokoda Track.
The wartime trail is vulnerable to erosion and damage from the thousands of trekkers who use it every year, and both Australian and PNG authorities want to improve how it’s managed.
Groups of Queensland national park rangers are working with their counterparts from the Kokoda Track Authority (KTA) and local villagers on the track maintenance.
Stuart Johnson, a ranger from Toowoomba, is one of the team leaders.
“We’ll be looking at ways in which we can shed water off the track,” he said.
The 96-kilometre Kokoda track takes about 50 hours walking time. That is about two kilometres per hour … putting this into perspective, a brisk walking speed on flat ground is six kilometres per hour. A two kilometre per hour rate gives some indication that Kokoda is no stroll in the park.
Walking might not be quite the right word to use to describe progress across the Owen Stanley Range: almost all of the 50 hours are spent descending or ascending; carefully negotiating your way down a narrow track, crossing a slippery log bridge over a fast flowing stream at the bottom, then climbing steeply and slowly. Sometimes the ascent so closely approaches the perpendicular that hands must assist feet. In the worst of these places the rate of advance is as slow as one kilometre an hour.
“We’ll be looking at ways we might be able to put steps in over reaches of track that don’t have steps on them, and we’ll try to do that in a way that maintains the character of the track.
“We’re not here to make it look like a Queensland park.”
The Queensland rangers are experienced in track work and maintenance in national parks, and they are showing the villagers some of the techniques rangers use to protect tracks against erosion.
They also want to use the skills and knowledge local people have about how to maintain the track.
“We need to upgrade the track so the trekkers that live in Australia will come and walk the trail, they will feel good and more trekkers will come to this country,” he said.
Source
ABC News
