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Papua New Guinea as “The land of the Unexpected” has so many surprises to offer to its many worldwide visitors. Whilst some of these can be fun, others may be extremely challenging and quite out of the ordinary.
Often we find the terminology, “Expect the unexpected” fulfilling not only within our varying cultures, beautiful landscapes, virgin rainforests with vast wilderness, but also with everyday situation.
And as we finally found out from Ower’s Corner – where the track from the renowned World War II Kokoda Trail normally ends or starts for every trekker – news is that no cars or trucks are expected to go all the way to Ower’s.
Trekkers might have to walk another extra mile to reach the nearest possible place for pick up as the road conditions towards Ower’s Corner is in a pretty bad shape and quite impassible after the continuous downpour.
The road has been deemed as in a very poor condition and unusable or “no longer open to trucks.”
Manager for Corporate Transport Niugini, Brad Bailey, and his assistant Aquila and their team of transporters have been to Ower’s Corner recently to drop of the group of trekkers who were accompanied by Charlie Lynn, and they said the last trekkers taken up, basically had to walk to Ower’s Corner as vehicles were unable to get past the mission.
Mr Aquila said the road condition was “very poor” and most likely there are chances of trucks overturning as there are deep rust and cavities in the road.
“To maintain control of any vehicle on this road is extremely hazardous and road is no longer open to trucks, 4WD’s only and in most cases no vehicles at all,” he said.
Mr Aquila said they have encountered a lot of difficulties and that includes his company suffering thousands of kina damage due to poor state of the road.
“The road should be kept graded to allow compacting of the surface with the additional vehicles that will in effect be able to travel up and down the road,” he said.
“In addition, another big issue would be that the storm water culverts are not being kept clear of debris thus anyone can suffer the situation where water is undermining the road base structure causing it to fail completely.” he said.
Ends
NOTE: To all wannabe trekkers…can you take that extra challenge? Not only that but you would have beaten old trekkers by walking that extra mile and most possibly complete the whole length of the track.
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