My Kokoda Journey: How it all Began

Welcome to yet another post in my Kokoda series. All the posts discussing my personal experiences will be titled "My Kokoda Journey" followed by a bit on the end (as seen on the title above). It must be noted that all these posts are scheduled and pre-written as I am away on Kokoda when it is scheduled to be posted so sorry if this is confusing in anyway. Anyway, yesterday I posted the history of the Kokoda track (well, an overview at least) so you could understand the significance. Today I am going to go back to where my journey to Kokoda all began back in April of 2013.

Original Image Source (no text): http://www.ylead.com.au/travel/kokoda/

It was late in April when at the end of a long day at school there was an announcement over the loud-speaker for several different students, including myself, to go to the office. I had absolutely no idea what was going on so I went down there and then one of the assistant principals and our then principal told us that we had been identified as good leaders and representatives of the school to apply for this Leadership program with Victoria Police that will culminate in a trip to Kokoda which was to originally be in October of 2013. The catch was that our school had not known about it until the Wyndham Police had contacted them via phone as the assistant principal to whom the initial email was sent was away on leave so our applications were already overdue. As a result of this we had to fill in the form and hand it back the next day by lunch so that they could send it through to the Police. Initially I was not going to apply as I was a little thrown off by the fact that it was KOKODA and I was so unfit. It was not until later that night after I discussed it with my parents that I decided I would give it a go; why not? The worst that could happen is that I was not selected, it would be fate. So I started filling it out that night but I ran out of time before I had to go to bed. The assistant principal then found me to get the form the next day while I was still finalising it. So it was Maths and while others were doing the work (do not worry, I had already completed it) I was filling out the application. I managed to finish it just in time and then I handed it in to the assistant principle. From memory, the front page was just personal details as well as fitness (on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being super fit and 10 being super unfit) as well as a scale of how much you wanted to be a part of the program (again on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being super enthusiastic and 10 being not fussed at all and not really interested). Then the other three pages had more questions about different things. From memory there was a question on our past leadership experiences, the history of Kokoda (which I researched) and why it was significant (from our perspective), what the values of the Kokoda campaign (Mateship, Endurance, Courage and Sacrifice) meant to us as well as a question on what we wanted to get out of the program. There were other questions I think but I can not remember them all off the top of my head. I handed that form in and then I waited.

It would be a little while before I heard anything more about the program. See you tomorrow!