Every town has an RSL. Not every town has one that gets a few hundred people out of bed on a cold morning to walk up a hill for someone else. Lara does. The Kokoda Walk is the sub-branch's biggest community event of the year, and it's one of those rare things that is simultaneously a commemoration, a fundraiser, a fitness event and a family morning out — without any of those cheapening the others.
The event
Lara RSL Kokoda Walk 2026
- Date
- To be confirmed by Lara RSL — check the sub-branch Facebook page
- Start
- You Yangs Regional Park — meeting point and time to be confirmed
- Distance
- Family-friendly and challenge options — details to be confirmed
- Cost
- Registration fee supports veteran welfare — amount to be confirmed
- Organiser
- Lara RSL Sub-Branch
- Proceeds
- Veteran welfare and support programs
01 / Why Kokoda
Between July and November 1942, Australian soldiers fought a series of battles along the Kokoda Track — a single-file foot trail across the Owen Stanley Range in Papua. The men of the 39th Battalion, a militia unit of mostly young, barely-trained Victorians, held the line at Isurava and Kokoda until regular troops arrived. Many were teenagers. They fought in mud, rain and mountain cold, short of food and ammunition, against a Japanese force that had not been stopped anywhere in the Pacific.
They stopped it there. Kokoda is, with good reason, remembered as the campaign that kept the war off Australian soil. It's also remembered for the Papuan carriers — the "Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels" — who carried wounded Australians for days over terrain that broke fit men.
Figure 01 · Kokoda, in numbers
| Measure | Detail |
|---|---|
| Track length | ~96 km, Owers' Corner to Kokoda village |
| Highest point | Mount Bellamy, ~2,190 m |
| Campaign | July – November 1942 |
| Australian deaths | Over 600 killed in action; more than 1,000 wounded; thousands more lost to illness |
| 39th Battalion | Militia unit — average age around 18–20 — that held Kokoda and Isurava before relief arrived |
| Today | Walking the actual track takes 8–10 days. The Lara walk is a morning — the point is the remembering, not the distance. |
02 / Why the You Yangs
Because it's ours, and because a hill is the right place to think about people who fought on one. The You Yangs climb is nothing like Kokoda — nobody pretends otherwise — but a few kilometres of steady uphill with the whole town around you does something a ceremony can't. Kids ask why we're doing it. Someone's grandfather gets talked about. You arrive at the top a bit out of breath and it's very hard not to think about men doing this for weeks, carrying wounded mates, in the rain.
03 / Where the money goes
RSL sub-branches are volunteer-run, and the welfare work is the part most people never see: helping a veteran navigate a DVA claim, covering an emergency bill, visiting someone in aged care who has no one else, funding a counselling session that the system has a six-month wait for. None of it is glamorous. All of it depends on events like this one raising the money to do it. Every registration and every sausage bought at the finish is a direct contribution to that work.
Everyone
- Families with kids and prams on the shorter route
- Walkers and runners who want the challenge
- Veterans and serving members — walk together, or just come to the finish
- Anyone who's ever meant to do something for the RSL and hasn't got round to it
Volunteer, donate, share
- Marshals, registration desk, BBQ — the sub-branch always needs hands
- Sponsor a walker or make a straight donation
- Share the event with the people you'd want beside you at the top
- Local businesses: a prize, a discount, a banner at the finish
04 / What to bring
- Sturdy shoes — the track is rocky in places.
- Water. More than you think.
- Hat and sunscreen; it's exposed near the top.
- A jacket — You Yangs mornings are cold even when the day won't be.
- Cash or card for the BBQ and raffle at the finish.
- Someone who wouldn't normally come.
05 / My part
I'll be walking, and I'll be at the finish for as long as they'll have me. If you're a local business that wants to get behind it and doesn't know who to talk to at the sub-branch, email me and I'll connect you. If you're a resident who wants to volunteer and isn't sure how, same. The RSL does the work; the rest of us can at least make the phone calls.
The men on the track in 1942 didn't get a choice about the hill. We do. Choosing to walk it anyway is the least we owe them — and it funds the care their successors are owed today.— David Greenwood OAM
Event details will be updated here as Lara RSL confirms them. Historical figures from the Australian War Memorial and the Department of Veterans' Affairs.
