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Kokoda Track permit fees are going to double next year, from K100 to K200.
There is opposition to the increase, but a new government-backed authority says money is needed to control guns, drugs and social unrest that threatens to prevent this iconic tourist attraction from leading the way to growth in inbound tourism.
Kokoda Track visitor numbers have risen four-fold in the past five years, and are set to more than double again in the future seasons, making the Track PNG?s second most important tourist asset, after coral.
In the developed world, if you want to go somewhere, you almost always get into a vehicle of some kind: a train, a plane, a bus or a car.
In Papua New Guinea, almost everyone making almost every journey walks: to the garden or the water supply, to school or to church, to visit the wantoks or to pursue an argument, to find a clinic or a government official, you walk.
Trekking the famous WWII 97km Kokoda Trail….
DSC00181.jpgPerhaps that?s why there continues to be a degree of misunderstanding between a host population that has painfully legged it over grudging mountain tops and hazardous stream crossings for thousands of years, and a throng of eager visitors for whom the opportunity to trudge over those same tortuous trails is a privilege for which they are willing to pay thousands of Kina.
The most-frequented portion of the famous Kokoda Track, the 100-plus kilometres between Kokoda in Northern Province and Ower?s Corner near Port Moresby, now hosts about 2000 visiting trekkers each year, spending up to K3000 each in-country.
This includes internal air fares and the permit to walk, but most of the money goes to guides and porters, guest houses and local food purchases.
So there is a windfall of perhaps K6 million drifting into the hands of Koiari and Orokaivan people each season, mainly between June and October, which they see, quite rightly, as their best chance of cash income and as an industry that needs to be built up, even if they don?t fully understand what drives visiting Australians and others to slog their way through mud and mountain and pay for the privilege of doing so.
International trekkers and porters walking along the Kokoda Trail:
IMG_0918__Small_.JPGAlready guest houses are being built by hopeful village entrepreneurs, sited off the track and out of phase with tour schedules, unlikely to attract revenue but sure to create resentment and friction among the villages along the corridor.
Guest facilities for which local villagers wish to charge fees in the vicinity of K20 per guest per night have no piped water, no showers, primitive latrines and few other facilities attractive to a weary group of hikers needing to wash the mud off and get a good night?s sleep.
Issuing permits allows numbers to be counted, and kept within the limits of the corridor to accommodate them.
To have lines of tourists climbing up and passing lines of tourists coming down would entirely diminish the Kokoda Track experience, Amuli says.
But several factors indicate that there will be greater pressure of numbers in future years.Long-haul travel has become less attractive to some tourists, and post 9/11 and Bali some sites of pilgrimage by Australians including Gallipoli have become off limits, just as they were beginning to attract a new generation of reverent and curious young people.
White water rafting and other adventure activities such as the Man from Snowy River Ride have been impacted by large increases in public liability insurance.
As an alternative destination, the spiritual and historical aspects of the walk from Kokoda to Ower?s Corner have added new appeal to its previously more limited reputation as a test of endurance.Ower's Corner:
IMG_0826__Small_.JPGIt is expected that 5000 or 6000 annual visitors could be walking the ridges and valleys in future years, Mr Amuli said, greatly increasing the impact on the physical environment, and the social strains already evident.
If the local spend therefore rises to between K15 million and K20 million, plus the external airfares, hotels and tour charges, you have a sum of money for which people are going to compete, either in a regulated or unregulated fashion.
There are about thirty tour operators offering the Kokoda experience, some of whom argue that if you turn the tough wartime trail into an armchair ride, you destroy its very appeal.But Authority chairman Alfred Amuli says the way to keep the peace is to ensure a spread of benefits, providing roofing iron and radios, schools and health centres for village development, and a co-ordinating authority to encourage further investment in the hallowed territory by AUSAid, Rotary and other committed donors.
Simple things like educating village gardeners to provide a wider range of fruits and vegetables that will be familiar and appealing to a hungry visitor should increase peace and harmony, not to say prosperity.
Naduri Village along the Track:
IMG_1144__Small_.JPGRemembering that the customer is right, has not always been understood in PNG?s infant eco-tourism industry.
PNG has to provide what its visitors want, if ever it is going to compete for numbers with other more developed tourism destinations including Fiji and Vanuatu, says experienced Kokoda guide Frank Taylor.
?My guests come on the Track for history, knowledge and education, and it has to be truthful, factual and geographically sound.?They also enjoy their contact with village life, seeing the real living situation of Papua New Guinean families, as distinct from bilas.
?This includes the gardens and the food sources, the birds and the wonderful botanical diversity.?We also go the whole way when required, on down to Gona and Buna. Six hundred allies, mostly Australians died on the Track, but 3000 allies, mostly Americans died on the north coast beaches.
?It?s important to paint the whole picture, we believe.?
Guides are selected from villages all along the route, to promote harmony, but also to expose visitors to a wide range of Papua New Guineans.
?Our village people are ambassadors for PNG, and we try to make the experience as meaningful as we can for visitors, so that they take away a better understanding of this country.?We must be getting the offering right, because sixty percent of all our initial enquiries convert into actual visitors to PNG.
?The interest and the commitment to visit Papua New Guinea and to like the place are there, so long as people know they are being looked after.?
As an operator, Frank Taylor supports the concept of an overall authority to improve conditions in the corridor, but is worried that the present body may be unrepresentative, particularly as not one tour operator has a seat on the board at present.?I think there are too many sticks on the fire, and the pot?s going to boil over,? he said.
Much of Koiari country is SDA, which leads to some awkward shutdowns at sunset on a Friday, but some groups of walkers have been exposed to SDA choir singing, gentle words of welcome, glimpses of the long-cherished image of the fuzzy-wuzzy angel, and a sense of the need for both Australians and Papua New Guineans to re-kindle friendships in an increasingly threatening region.
A rugged Track that was the scene of bloodshed and pain, compassion and heroism, may be an important page on which to write a new history of mutual respect and benefit between Papua New Guinean hosts and a new generation of Australian visitors.
ends
Isurava Monumnet..
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