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Abstract
The global interest in the memory of war in recent decades has brought challenges in managing and conserving extra-territorial war heritage: that is, sites of memory that have a greater significance for people outside the sovereign territory in which the sites physically reside. This article considers this issue in relation to the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea, a site of central importance in the Australian national memory of war. The successful conservation of the Track throws new light on the practice of heritage diplomacy. Working mostly outside the more commonly explored arena of global heritage governance, the Australian and New Guinean governments employed bilateral diplomacy to manage domestic stakeholder expectations, and thereby identified a convergence of interests and mutual gain by linking heritage protection with local development needs. They have also encouraged the construction of a narrative of the events of World War II that in some respects might be described as shared. Thus, heritage diplomacy is underpinned by a transnational consensus about the heritage’s significance, at least at the government level, which arguably divests the Kokoda Track of its exclusively ‘extra-territorial’ quality.
Notes
1. There has been an ongoing, and energetic, debate about which is the preferred term: Kokoda Track or Kokoda Trail. I have followed James (Citation2009) in using Track.
2. H.C. Dowsett, Military History Section, Albert Park, to Secretary, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 8 July 1960, AWM 113 16/1/1, Australian War Memorial (AWM). For further details see 3DRL 6643, Series 2, wallet 68/141; AWM54 485/2/4 and 485/2/9, AWM.
3. Port Moresby Mission to Canberra, 30 January 1995, Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA), file 95058. This and later cited DVA files were viewed under a Special Access application.
4. Toy Jonson, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, personal communication, 11 September 2007.
5. Letter, James Rogers to R.A. Gilbert, 30 November 1995, DVA file 951014.
6. Quoted in DVA file 951014.
7. ‘Commemorating the Kokoda Tradition: A Proposal for the Establishment of a Sustainable Memorial to the Sacrifices made in the Defence of Australia During 1942’, supplied privately to author by John Rennie, Port Moresby.
8. The ex-patriot was John Rennie, a former Victorian Police Inspector and adviser to the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary Fraud Squad, who walked the Track on multiple occasions.
9. In addition to the main memorial, ten information panels (including two in the Tok Pisin language) have been installed.
10. Commemorative Visit Album, copy provided by Garry Tongs, Queanbeyan, 2015.
11. Rod Hillman, personal communication, 25 June 2010. According to Hillman, some 25% of the fees in 2009 were distributed to fourteen wards along the Track.
12. The original Kokoda Initiative document is no longer readily accessible on the web. A copy was provided to the author at a Kokoda Initiative stakeholders’ forum conduct by the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
13. One of the most prominent is Charlie Lynn, who established a tour company Adventure Kokoda in 1991 and has led 65 expeditions since then (Adventure Kokoda http://www.kokodatreks.com/aboutus/index.cfm). Lynn was also a Member of the NSW Legislative Council, 1995–2015.
14. The Kokoda Experience Stakeholder Forum, convened by Department of Environment. Heritage, Water, Heritage and the Arts, Sydney, March 2012.
15. The issue of compensation was raised during Keating’s 1992 visit and at the 1994 PNG – Australian ministerial forum: Grant Thompson, Australian High Commission, Port Moresby to Minister DVA, 8 June 1995, DVA file 951014.
16. I owe this insight to Mark Nizette, Port Moresby.
17. Damian Hickey, personal communication, 24 June 2010; Jane Philomenon, AusAid, personal communication, 23 June 2010.