(We Ragged Bloody Kokodiatrics)
The New Guinea jungle is fine in the night time.
If you’re not at war, then you’re here at the right time.
So lay back and listen – it’s turn out the light time.
Reflection will help you to crash.
Doze off in your tent – take a whiff of your armpits.
Forget snakes and mozzies, and leaches, and sore bits,
and drift as you marvel, at our bunch of misfits,
then morning will dawn in a flash.
Now Trekkers up here are becoming prolific,
from west of Australia, to west of Pacific.
We plod to Kokoda (a sight quite horrific)
at quite a pace less than a dash.
We Trekkies are experts at slipping and sliding
and going arse-up in a show that’s providing
our mates with some joy, so it’s hard when deciding,
just who, on each day, wins the cash?
From the moment our first bloke fell flat on his back,
in the sucking black mud of the Kokoda Track,
we all yelled our approval, and “Get up – you hack.”
(A Trekky had had his first crash.)
As our local guides watch the ungainly parade,
of overweight oafs, using poles they have made
to save us from skiing, o’er the lip down the glade,
they’ll reach out and help in a flash”.
Our wonderful native mates string out the bush ropes,
at rivers and crossings for our bunch of fat dopes,
and offer support, for we must seem like ‘no-hopes’.
Yet few of us went the ‘big splash’.
With our average age about seventy six,
(and that’s tossing in young blokes, and counting the chicks)
we all hobble and slither on our walking sticks,
but on through the jungle we bash.
This platoon of old has-beens, who used to be fine,
(AND were well honed young athletes before our decline)
chose to tackle Kokoda – a fair dinkum shrine,
with many a click and a flash.
As ev’ry day passes our whiskers are growing.
We’re lunging and lurching, and puffing and blowing,
but steely expressions, show eyes that are glowing,
as on to Kokoda we thrash.
We Kokodiatrics are not to be daunted,
but press on as zombies, and follow as haunted,
the footsteps of ghosts of ‘The Track’, where our vaunted,
old Diggers dug in for each clash.
For we came to pay tribute, to trek and to see
what our fathers and uncles did for you and me
when they kicked Tojo’s backside right back the sea,
with sacrifice, valour and dash.
Our soldierly skills are now less than impressive.
We like a nice sleep in, and feel it’s repressive
for old farts like us to have loads, so excessive,
for heavy packs rub up a rash.
But we’d never whinge – No, not tough nuts like our lot.
We’ve plenty of tucker at night in the hot pot.
We’re soldiering on now, (with dengue and foot-rot)
with oodles of noodles and mash.
From all walks of life, and from all round Australia,
we stand with our grotty bedraggled regalia,
and salute from Kokoda, ‘DIGGERS, WE HAIL YA!”
Three cheers, and three beers (in a flash).
© Wayne Pantall September 2006.