Hindsight: The Guns of Ioribaiwa
January 23rd, 2008 by Dan Hill
A war-time story of the 1942 campaign for the Kokoda Track, (relatively) well-known in Australia as the battle that turned back the Japanese advance south in World War II. The large and well-equipped Japanese army had got within 40 miles of Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea and then part of Australia. With air raids on Darwin in Australia's north and a cheeky if ill-fated intervention by two Japanese subs right into the heart of Sydney's harbour, Australia was riven with fear of invasion from the north (Watch out for Baz Luhrmann's forthcoming epic Australia, set at this point).
This fine, straight-ahead historical documentary tells the story of the herculean efforts by Australian soldiers in lugging artillery by hand up the near-vertical sides of the Ioribaiwa ridge, in conditions that were described at the time as the most inhospitable on Earth. A famous victory, told here with many first-hand accounts from the soldiers involved - who are a predictably characterful bunch. But it's a victory that was barely marked at all at the time, with a shameful lack of recognition from the US commander-in-chief, General Macarthur, and Australian counterpart, General Blarney, who in a now-infamous incident, accused his troops of being "running rabbits" in a formal address on the parade ground. Thankfully this story redresses the balance.
What's also interesting to my ears, other than the epic story, is how the sound design for the reportage has changed over 60 years. The music, and tone and pace of the presentation, accompanying those original war-time reports is predictably jaunty, a fully Western orchestral war-time pomp, laden with a sense derring-do and nationalistic fervour - not that far removed from the sound of shows like Dick Barton. Now, the ABC reporter's voice is perhaps appropriately quieter, considered and reflective, and the accompanying music is more of an atmospheric ambient backdrop of sombre washes and percussion-driven pulses, inflected with a kind of ethnomusicology-meets-Café-del-Mar sense of the surrounding tropical environment, perhaps - not 'Western' at all, in its symbolism, and certainly devoid of pomp.
Equally, it should be noted there is no representation of a Japanese presence here - and thus not part of contemporary attempts to present balanced views of these campaigns and experiences - but this is still a gripping story, well-told.
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