PM Transcripts

TEL: 11. Dec. 92 15: 01 No. 044 P. 01/ 01
PRIME MINISTER 142/ 92
STATEMENT BY THEk PRIME MINISThR, THlE HON PJ. KEATING, MP
BA'XTLE OF GONA
All Australians should remember this week thc dcbt of gratitude they owe to the troops
who, exactly 50 years ago, overcame fierce defences to occupy the Japancse stronghold of
Gona, in Paptia.
Thc campaign in Papua did not end with the iccapture of Kokoda. It involved further
months of bitter fighting in malarial swamps, against anl increasingly desperatc enemy.
Thcre were 8,500 Australian and American casualties in the Papuan campaign. Twothirds
of thenm dicd in the battles for the Japanese beachheads around Gona, Buna and
Sanananda. These men died in vicious hand-to-hand fighting around thc Japanese
bunker-,; their Japanese opponents died rather than surrender.
I recall the words of Dudley McC'arthy, thc official historian, who wrote that the fighting
around Gona, Buna and Sanaiaiida was " so appalling that most hardened soldiers would
remember it unwillingly, and as their most exacting experience of the whole war."
Australians should rceember this week men such as Colonel Ralph Honner, who led his
militiamen across the Kokoda Track and into the maelstrom of Gona; men such as
_ Lieutenant Bob Sword, who served throughout the Kokoda campaign but who died
leading his platoon against the coastal machine-gun posts; and men such as Private A. J.
Skilbeck, who repeatedly crossed open ground under heavy fire, carrying mcssages and
wounded comrades.
These men were real Australian heroes.
While we all honour the men who fought on thc Kokoda Track, wc must never forget the
heroes who fought the Papuan campaign to its conclusion through tile vicious battlcs at
Sanananda, Du~ na and Gona.
Canberra December 1992