Attack on the Black Cat Track. Max Carmichael
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I stuck by my word and we started training about seven months out from the trek departure.9
Rod Clarke was a late addition to the Melbourne-based group. A friend of Pete Stevens and swimming coach of Pete’s wife Dee, he was asked to join the group in February 2013. Initially, he had concerns regarding the cost of the trek, but on further consideration he agreed to join. He had always enjoyed camping and an outdoor lifestyle, and as a young man this had led him to a career in agriculture and employment in New Guinea:
I had a passion for farming and so my aunt suggested I go to Dookie Agricultural College, which I did from 1964 to 1966, and gained my Dookie Diploma of Agriculture. From 1967 to 1973 I worked as a Rural Development Officer for the Department of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries, in the then Territory of Papua and New Guinea. I started off in Laiagam in the far west of the Western Highlands, then moved to lonely Margarima in the Southern Highlands. I spent my last three years in Mount Hagen, back in the Western Highlands, where I was both the district and the local Rural Development Officer.10
In 1973, Rod returned to Australia and worked briefly for the firm Economic Wool Producers as a wool sales representative, before accepting a position as a Plant Pathologist with the Victorian Department of Agriculture, where he worked from 1974 until 2001. During 2001 he took an early retirement, and for three years filled his time competing in triathlete events. This diversion from work ended in 2007 when he returned to employment, working part-time for Envirotechniques, a company that specialises in Bush Management projects.
Rod continued his interest in sport and in keeping fit through swimming and coaching for the Doncaster Dolphins Masters Swimming Club, and the YMCA’s Aquarena adult squads at the Doncaster pool. At the age of sixty-seven, Rod was the elder statesman of the trekking group, a fact his younger Victorian-based companions took delight in reminding him. During preparation training for the trek, he was able to demonstrate he was arguably one of the fittest. He was also one of the better informed on issues regarding PNG:
I’d been a bit of a student of Papua New Guinea. I’ve collected PNG stamps, I’ve got shelves full of books on the place, and the people I know up there ring me all the time — I’ve become more confident over the years in speaking pidgin, not only face-to-face but over the phone, and reading it. So this trip was going to be really exciting for me; I was looking forward to it.11
The final member of the trekking group was forty-nine-year-old Gary Essex. Originally from the Victorian town of Yarrawonga, on completing school he attended the University of Melbourne, where he gained a Bachelor of Commerce in 1985. He commenced work with the firm Coopers & Lybrand in January 1985 as an auditor, progressing to the role of audit manager by 1990, and in 1991 became a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia. In 2000 he was admitted as partner in the Albury Wodonga accounting practice of Johnsons MME.
In his younger days Gary played a lot of sport, but on retiring from competitive sport he found he missed the activity. He began to search for another outlet that would hold his interest and maintain a healthy level of physical fitness. Trekking filled this need, and in 2010 he and his brother Trevor walked the Kokoda Track. Gary enjoyed the trek immensely and found that it triggered another interest, that of military history. The tour guide on that occasion was Pam Christie of PNG Trekking Adventures. On returning to Australia, Gary found he was yearning for another PNG adventure, so he contacted Pam, seeking her advice:
I was interested in doing another trek and Pam mentioned that there were seven guys down to do the Black Cat. I had heard about the Black Cat Track and thought that it would be exactly what I was looking to do. So after doing some research, including seeing that Federal Parliamentarians Jason Clare and Scott Morrison as well as a Channel Nine camera crew had recently walked the track, I signed up.12
At this stage Gary had not met any of the other members of the trekking group. Nevertheless, he embraced the idea totally and began to enthusiastically prepare.
And so the trekkers had committed themselves to the September trek. While each member of the group might claim that adventure, cultural interest and military history as reasons why they had made this commitment, there was possibly another motive common to this group that set them apart from younger people who trek the Black Cat. This motive was articulated by Glen Reiss:
I think as you go through stages of your life. You have been so busy and you feel like you have to work for various reasons and have to work really hard. Then one day you suddenly realise you’ve got to enjoy life and you can’t say, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’ There comes a time where you sort of say, ‘Oh no, I really want to do this and I’m going to make time and I’m going to do it with people that I can share it with.’ Sometimes when you go away for work or business or whatever, you spend a lot of time travelling with people that you don’t really know and are never going to see again, and these are like four guys that for the last six or eight years I’ve constantly come across and had beers with, and so it’s just a mid-life crisis perhaps. Or maybe it’s just time, a realisation when you sort of mature a bit that you’ve got to do things, otherwise you get to a stage that you can’t and you can’t say you didn’t have a chance because you make your decisions and you make your chances, and so you just do it.13
Having reached the decision to trek the Black Cat, the eight contenders were faced with deciding the method of conducting the trek that best suited their individual needs. There was no thought of conducting an independent trek of the track, so various tour operators who offered treks along the Black Cat were carefully researched. For Gary Essex, his previous experience with Port Moresby-based PNG Trekking Adventures resulted in his choice to use the same tour operator for this trek. The research conducted by the others led to the same conclusion. The trek the eight men booked for was to be conducted in September 2013.
PNG Trekking Adventures was owned and operated by expat New Zealanders Pam Christie and Mark Hitchcock. Pam was an experienced and well-respected trek leader who had led tours throughout PNG, including the Kokoda and Black Cat tracks. Mark was an efficient manager who employed well-tested and effective management procedures. PNG Trekking Adventures had two proud boasts. The first was that they employed only experienced staff, and the second was that they enjoyed a good relationship with the local people in the areas they trekked.
Having experienced staff and porters ensures the tour operator’s clients receive first-class service throughout their trekking experience. The porters’ task is to ensure the trekkers see the best the environment has to offer by the safest route, and that they enjoy the experience without the hardship of carrying their equipment and food. When working in support of a trek, porters often carry loads in excess of forty kilograms, walk barefoot and have little other than a plastic poncho for protection against the rain. They carry tentage, cooking utensils, food, first-aid equipment, and many other miscellaneous items. Some of the porters specialise as personal porters, acting as a trekker’s individual adviser and carrying the trekker’s personal backpacks.
Employment as a porter for a trek, or performing cultural ceremonies for the benefit of tourists, is for many the only way to gain additional purchasing power to buy extras that mean the difference between some comfort and the harshness of poverty. The extra money can also provide food security for a village, removing the pressure from those who must strive to provide sufficient food for their families on a daily basis.
However, in 2013 it was well known within PNG’s trekking industry that the communities along the Black Cat Track were inexperienced and untrained in dealing with tourists, and as a result provided a less-than-optimum service. To overcome this perceived failing, it had become common practice for tour operators to limit their recruitment of porters, particularly of personal porters, to men with proven experience. While this practice made perfect business sense, in a society where everything is shared it was culturally inappropriate, and was the catalyst for tension and discontent along the track. It also placed the men from various other traditional lands in the insidious position of breaking traditional law, in that they were making gain while on another local person’s land. This was by no means entirely the fault of PNG Trekking Adventures, but a situation was developing along the track which meant their claim of a good relationship with the local people was becoming questionable.
There was an additional issue related to PNG Trekking