When you’ve just crossed Papua New Guinea’s the Owen Stanley Mountains, the big staircase outside The Catho suddenly doesn’t look so big.
Club CEO Michael Lavorato was on hand to welcome back Melanie Tincknell and Craig Butler – the latest Catholic Club staffers to walk the famous Kokoda Track.
“It was a lot tougher than I thought it would be, a real mental challenge,” said Craig, our assistant IT Manager. “Once your legs start aching it’s very difficult to do that day after day.”
“But it was good to learn more about the individual battles of the campaign in 1942 and meet some of the descendants of the fuzzy wuzzy angels.
“It also taught me that we’re more capable than we understand, when put in situation where you have to dig deep and achieve something, you can do it, whereas in our day-to-day lives a lot of people don’t believe in themselves.”
Melanie, one of our gaming attendants, said it wasn’t just the mental and historic lessons, but the cultural ones. “Seeing the way the villagers still live really hit home, so not having phones and everything else like that on the trip was quite nice,” she said. “Seeing how simply they live compared to how we do.”
“Thank you to the Catholic Club and Board of Directors for sending us, it was a great privilege to walk in the footsteps of the young soldiers who fought at Kokoda to keep us safe.”
