The track of broken hearts

You’re never too old to try new things.” That was the message Mary-Jo Cochrane, 48, had for Year 11 and 12 students at a mentoring breakfast last week.
And she would know.
The Narre Warren South resident embarked on a vigorous 10-day Kokoda trek last year, and has two more strenuous challenges ahead of her.
It was in October 2007 that Mrs Cochrane made the pact with three friends – Patsy, Robyn and Thea – to conquer the Kokoda Track.
Their friendship ignited about five years ago. They met through a genuine interest for tennis, and played for Upper Beaconsfield.
“We were on the court, taking a break and chatting,” Mrs Cochrane said. “I suggested we do the Kokoda trek because it seemed like a good thing to do at the time. Everyone said,’ why not?’ and the next thing you know- we’re at Kokoda.”
The four were joined by two friends, Marley and Vicki, one of their fathers Tom, 64, and a friend, Greg, 59.
They signed up with Adventures Kokoda, and began training in April 2008 – pushing each other to their physical limits.
“We started by doing 1,000 steps at Ferntree Gully, and we thought we were going to collapse!” she said.
The six friends were busy juggling work and family lives, but managed to train three times a week.
As they got closer to the challenge, they would spend half days walking, and the week before the trek they climbed Mount Donna Buang two days in a row.
“The whole time we thought, what have we got ourselves into, am I fit enough to do this, can I do it?” Mrs Cochrane said.
“But we had so much fun training. It became a nice social get-together.”
The eagerly awaited day finally came on 1 July.
They were joined by 80 porters, two trek leaders, 30 men ranging from age 18 to their late sixties, and two women who were both in their thirties.
“We were well and truly the minority,” Mrs Cochrane said. “We all looked at each other and knew what was on each others’ minds. There was a lot of self-doubt, and fear of the unknown.”
The group was divided into small planes and made the trip to Kokoda from Port Moresby.
“It was beautiful scenery,” she said. “But it was treacherous, and the jungle was dense.”
They began their hike along the lengthy and demanding trek, and kept walking when the sun went down.
“I remember seeing a little boy about nine years old on the first day. He was walking with us to a village, carrying a 10 kg sack of flour, in his bare feet,” Mrs Cochrane said.
“I thought, if he could do it, so could I. You had to be positive and leave whingeing behind.”
On the first day the trek leader informed the group there would be no princesses on the trek, Mrs Cochrane said.
“From then on our motto was ‘get over it.’ ”
The next morning started with a 5.15am wake-up call from a trek leader. The group filled up on a high carbohydrate breakfast before they were briefed and departed.
The group would walk anywhere from four kilometres a day to 22 kilometres a day.
Mrs Cochrane said though the entire trek was memorable, two moments had an exceptional effect on her.
The first was stopping at Surgeons Rock, where during the Battle of Isurava doctors had to make the decision whether or not the wounded would be carried from the rock onto Port Moresby to get proper medical attention.
“It was a life and death situation,” she said. “Looking at it, you couldn’t help but become emotional.”
The second moment involved two brothers from Perth who were part of the 38-member group.
During the war, their father got lost in the bush for 10 days near Isurava, but was found by a ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel’- a Papau New Guinean who had helped injured Australian troops on the Kokoda Track during the war.
During the 2008 trek, the group had stopped at nearly the same place the brothers’ father had disappeared.
“A local came to speak to us, and the two brothers told him about their father’s experience,” she said.
“Then the local told us his father told a similar story. His father was the Fuzzy Wuzzy who found the brother’s father. It was amazing.”
The group fought back tears during 10 days of strenuous hiking. They wore the same clothes every day, washed in freezing water and braved the toilet in the bush – until they reached their destination – Ower’s Corner.
“The whole time you are focused on the physical component of the trek. You think about finishing it – just putting one foot in front of the other,” she said. “Then when we completed, it just hit us. It released all these emotions that we bottled up on during the walk.”
The trip wrapped up with a rickety bus ride to a hotel, a relaxed night with a glass of wine and a group dinner where people shared their best and worst memories of the trip.
“It was so interesting to hear everybody’s favourite parts of the trek,” she said. “There were 38 of us and 38 different stories.”
The group went to a reunion dinner in Melbourne in March 2009, where they spoke to diggers who had walked the trek during the campaign.
“It really made us appreciate what the Australian soldiers had done,” she said.
Mrs Cochrane thought her trekking days were over, but Vicki suggested the pair trek to the base camp at Mount Everest.
After brief hesitation, she agreed. They leave for the adventure next month.
The group of six fierce females also plan to challenge themselves to Camino Di Santiago in March 2010, also known as the Pilgrimage of St James. They will be walking 300km across northern Spain.
Mrs Cochrane said she hoped anyone wanting to do the trek did so with a reputable company, recruited friends to join them, and remained positive throughout the challenge.
She said the journey taught her a valuable lesson.
“Don’t ever say, ‘it’s not for me’. I wasn’t a bushwalker,” she said. “If someone said to me two years ago I would do Kokoda, Everest Base Camp and Camino Di Santiago, I would have said, ‘yeah right’. But never say never!”