Everyday clubs are supporting their local communities and this would not be possible without the support of our volunteers.
From 14-20th of May join us in celebrating National Volunteer Week. This week allows us to recognise our hard working volunteers and the contribution they have to the community.
If you have any volunteers that you would like to recognise during this period please email marketing@clubswa.com.au to let us know!
Follow the link below for more information.
http://www.volunteeringaustralia.org/News-and-Events/-National-Volunteer-Week/Update-2-National-Volunteer-Week-2012.asp
Monday, April 30, 2012
Monday, April 2, 2012
An Experience of a Lifetime
The Kokoda Track Through the Eyes of Jaymee Naughton
I’ve been home from Papua New Guinea for almost six months
now and not a day goes by when I don’t think about the Trail. Walking the
Kokoda Trail was the most amazing experience I have endured. I knew the trek
would be physically challenging, but I didn’t quite fully understand how
emotionally difficult it would be. I learnt a great deal about myself and about
other people as well as the history of the Kokoda campaign.
I met so many amazing people who walked the track with me
and it was amazing how quickly the bonds between us grew. Everyone was best
friends a few days in to the track and I have made some lifelong friends that I
still keep in contact with on a daily basis. As well as the youth I walked the
track with, we also encountered many amazing adults along the way. John Nalder
and Dave Sherry, our trek leaders were two of the most inspiring men I have
ever met. The amount of knowledge they possess about the history of the track
and how passionate about the preservation of it they are was phenomenal.
We flew in to Papua New Guinea from Sydney on the 26th of
September 2011. This was my first trip overseas and I was incredibly nervous, but I
was made to feel very comfortable by everyone and I had been very well prepared
by the Clubs WA team. The first few days were a mixture of emotions; I was
nervous about being so far away from home by myself for the first time but I
was also very excited to meet so many amazing people my age and of course I was
anxious about getting out there to walk the track. Disappointment struck,
however, on the day we were scheduled to fly out to Kokoda. We sat at the
airport and waited for our already delayed flight for hours before we were
informed that there was too much fog and we were unable to fly out. After hours of getting to know you games,
practical jokes, a few naps and various trips to the snack stand we were told
that the fog had finally cleared up, but they had used our plane for another
flight and we would have to wait for it to be ready for our flight. So we
waited some more before finally we were told the plane was ready, but that the
fog had returned and we couldn’t fly out to Kokoda that day. After seven hours
of discovering 101 ways to entertain ourselves we were sent back to Sogeri
Lodge where we were staying.
We took this opportunity to drive to the city in
Port Moresby. The culture there was so incredibly different to what I am used
to. The people were living in the worst conditions I have ever seen. There were
hardly any houses, only a few built up in the hills, but there were many
shelters made of sticks and old tarp. Many of the people carried machetes and
at one stage we were shocked to see a very young boy walking around with a
rifle. The violence is bad there and we were warned not to show our money because
people were killed for as little as 10K, just under five Australian dollars. After visiting the city we drove to the Bomana war cemetery
to visit the graves of all the men that had fought and died in Kokoda. There
were approximately 3280 buried men at this cemetery of which 700 were unmarked.
We didn’t stay long, but we stayed long enough for the image of these men who
had fought and died for my freedom to motivate me to make them proud, to honour
their name and their sacrifice by finishing the track.
We were finally allowed to fly out the next day and we went
in two groups in a plane designed for only about 15 people. When we arrived
in Kokoda we landed in a date palm plantation and walked to the village. This
was our first section of walking for the trek; we didn’t realize how much we
should have appreciated the flat ground.
Throughout the day we had a massive climb to the village we were meant
to be stopping for lunch at the previous day. Our walk was delayed one day
because we weren’t able to fly out and John was determined to catch it up so we
stayed on schedule. It was very hard adjusting to the humidity and it was
obviously very hard work making the climb. Ali, a PE teacher from Sydney pushed
me and encouraged me all the way up the hill. This was when I started to
realize that if I was going to do this, I was going to do this with the love
and support of everyone else that was walking. We continued on walking (in an
attempt to catch up two days walking in one day) until three in the morning!
This was not only very difficult physically but it was so hard mentally as the
leaders would keep telling us different times as to how long we had left. It
also didn’t help that we couldn’t see a thing and we were trekking through the
rain and the mud. Through all the difficulties of this part of the trek, I did
see probably the most beautiful thing that I saw during my trip; as we walked
and it rained we were surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of fireflies.
I had a slightly different experience to some for the first
few days and it wasn’t one that I could say benefitted my experience. Due to
the different climate in Papua New Guinea I had a reaction to my anti-malaria
medication which caused me to be nauseous and vomiting for a few days before we
worked out that it was the medication. I had to push on and continue the trek
even though I was sick, I refused to give up and was determined to carry on and
pay tribute to the men that had lost their lives. In a way, I experience a
little bit of what the men on the track experienced when they were sick but
were forced to keep going because it was a life or death situation. I was
lucky, I had time to rest every now and then, constant access to water and a
medic. The men that walked the track didn’t have that privilege and it just
made me understand how difficult their fight was.
Two of my favourite people along my journey were Frank and
Kylie, the cooks that came along with us on the trip. Every time I saw them,
Frank would yell “hey rasta mari!”, which means, girl with the rusty hair. They
would always have a beautiful smile on their faces and we had many
conversations with them about their families and their lives outside of Kokoda. Even now,
I still keep in touch with Frank.
On the trek you have a lot of quiet time, a lot of time to
walk and think not only about the history that has been made there but also
about yourself and who you are as a person. There was one point in time where
we were split apart and made to walk down a path through a moss forest for two
hours without seeing another person. Besides the constant fear of accidentally
going the wrong way and getting lost, it offered a wonderful opportunity that I
often took for granted back home. I found that during that time I was able to
really think about what I wanted to do with my life, who I wanted to be as a
person and what things I could change to be that better person. I learnt to
value silence and quiet reflection, a moment that has not been commonly found
when I returned home. Whenever I do get the chance, I take the quiet time to
reflect upon myself and to evaluate who I am and what I want to do. I had a lot
of time to consider my path in life and it asserted my dream of becoming a
doctor and working in third world countries, much like Papua New Guinea.
There was one point on the track, about six days in where I
hit my emotional wall. I was tired and sore and I was very homesick. I wasn’t
used to going this long without my family and it was certainly affecting my attitude
for the day. I proved to myself that I could push through the hard times, no
matter how hard it gets.
Brigade Hill was probably the most touching place we visited
on the track. We sat in between rows of sticks that marked the death of many
soldiers. We were told the story of how a group of young soldiers were sent
back to the hill to push back the Japanese and give them time to get their
wounded far enough down the track, and how they handed over their belongings to
their mates staying behind because they knew they were going to die. The fact
that those soldiers gave the ultimate sacrifice for their mates both there and
back home makes you seriously question your own priorities. If the time came,
would I have been brave enough to do the same? If they gave their life for us, for our
future, doesn’t that mean that we owe them our lives? But what would they want
with it? What can I do to make them proud, to make their sacrifice worth
something? Stan Bisset promised his dying brother “I’ll live a good life”. That’s
what I decided I needed to to, to review the priorities in my life and live out
a long, fulfilling life through dedicating my time and skills to other people.
The last night on the track presented us with a very scary
experience. One of the boys flashed money by accident in one of the villages
while buying some bags to take home. Apparently word got around that we were
carrying a large sum of money and people had followed us to our next campsite.
We were told to stay together by the fire and that everything would be ok
because we had security patrolling the borders of our campsite. When we later
discovered that one of the tents had been opened and the possessions stolen, we
began to be quite scared, remembering the advice we were given when we arrived
about the amount of money we could be harmed for. Needless to say it was a
sleepless night; lucky we only had a couple of hours walking to do the next
day.
There are no words to describe the feeling I had when I had
finished the Kokoda track. It was like everything had been lifted and the world
seemed like a better place. I was so proud of myself and of all the people that
I had walked the track with. It is an experience that has greatly impacted how
I live and who I am as a person. I am so grateful to have been given this
opportunity by Clubs WA. It truly was the experience of a lifetime.
By Jaymee Naughton
2012 Clubs WA Awards for Excellence
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