Australia commemorated Anzac Day yesterday. But with the battle of Gallipoli a distant memory and only one first world war veteran still alive, attention is turning to a savage second world war campaign fought in the jungles of Papua New Guinea.
For decades the battle of the Kokoda Trail, described by one historian as 'a knife fight out of the Stone Age', was overshadowed by Gallipoli, which is regarded as a defining moment in Australia's coming of age as an independent nation.
But a recent spate of books has spawned growing interest in the campaign and a feature film released this week promises to do for Kokoda what the 1981 Peter Weir film starring Mel Gibson did for Gallipoli. Four other films on Kokoda are in the pipeline.
'In the national conversation about Australia's military history, some people are saying Kokoda is Gallipoli for a new generation,' said Dennis Grant, from the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. 'The difference is that Gallipoli was a failure, whereas at Kokoda we prevailed.'
The Kokoda Trail is a 96km-long jungle track that winds its way through the razor-back mountains and rainforest of the Owen Stanley Range in Papua New Guinea.
In 1942, Australian troops were deployed to the track to halt 6,000 Japanese soldiers who intended to take the capital of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby, and threaten Australia with invasion.