Kokoda Track : stori bilong waitlain tasol? = Kokoda Track : only a whiteman story?

Abstract

Since 1992 the Kokoda Track has become a cultural phenomenon and has increased in popularity as a site of pilgrimage and adventure tourism for Australians. This trend has paralleled an increased interest in Australian military history and its link with national identity. The Kokoda Track has extended the Anzac tradition, which studies have shown has come to dominate not only perspectives on Australian history and nationalism, but has also deeply influenced contemporary Australian culture and society. In comparison,the depth of analysis and research carried out on the Kokoda Track has rarely gone beyond its military history. This study explores the many different facets that surround the Kokoda Track, which include politics, tourism, Whiteness, 'Whiteman', White Indigeneity, the 'ideal native', exclusion, identity, and memorials. It examines and analyses media articles, political speeches, photographs, literature, films, documentaries and academic work. Additionally, this thesis adds to original insights of the subject by incorporating the researcher's field experiences of the Kokoda Track and empirical data collected from the Australian War Memorial and Kokoda Track memorials in Papua New Guinea and Australia. It provides original contributions to knowledge by combining theoretical analysis, literary analysis and vignettes to encapsulate the multilayered and complex nature of the study. The disparate elements are connected through an integration of relevant theories and the development of original theoretically informed argument. The Kokoda Track, as it has been narrated, not only celebrates war, it promotes a White history of Australia that excludes many contemporary Australians. Herein lies the original theoretical position of the thesis. As long as Australia relies on its military history and the heroism of its soldiers to construct its national identity, some will be more 'Australian' than others. As shown in the thesis, the tropes of the Papua New Guinean,most recently the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel, are embedded in colonialist ideology. The memorialisation and romanticisation of Australia's military history, and demonising of the 'enemy other', perpetuates fear and the perception that war is an innate characteristic of Australia's national identity. In the years following the Cronulla Riots (2005) the Kokoda Track has been the setting for young Muslim-Australians to learn more about 'Australian culture' and 'what it means to be an Australian'. But it is argued that these concepts are inherently illusory. In conclusion, this thesis finds that national identity, as evidenced in the analysis of the Kokoda Track, promotes White nationalism and White Indigeneity, thus constructing symbolic inequality rather than unity among Australian citizens.

Date of Award	2016
Original language	English