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Loddon HERALD Vol 5 No 13, THURSDAY APRIL 3, 2025 ISSN 2653-1550
RSL SUB-BRANCH, COLLEGE SENDING FOUR ON FAMOUS TRACK WALK
KOKODA BOUND By CHRIS EARL
Kicking goals in new season
FOUR Loddon students will walk in the footsteps of Australia’s World War Two diggers. Wedderburn College students Indi Simpson, Chantelle Badenhorst, Dakota Martin and Tyson Blair, who is Loddon Shire’s current young citizen of the year, were last week named inaugural recipients of the new RSL scholarships. The quartet in July will spend eight days on the 96km Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea’s Owen Stanley Ranges where 625 soldiers were killed. Wedderburn-Korong Vale RSL sub-branch had wanted to award two scholarships each year. But president Roger Paterson said strong support from community organisations “and some very generous anonymous donors has meant four students will be able to experience walking Kokoda this year”. “All four applications for the scholarships - they honour Albert ‘Knocker’ Hayes, an Inglewood soldier who was on the Kokoda Track and Norman “Digger” Letts, a well-known Wedderburn resident who was held as a prisoner of war - were fantastic. And luckily, there were spots available in this year’s walk for all four to go,” Mr Paterson said. “Without this support - the college has been terrific from the start - and organisations like Lions, this opportunity for local students that we have been working towards for more than 18 months would not be happening.” College principal Danny For-
COLOURS will be flying and horns tooted from the boundary when local football, netball and hockey start their 2025 seasons on Saturday. When across the Loddon Valley and North Central, town spirit will be brimming as supporters get behind their local teams. Today’s Loddon Herald includes a special 36-page Ultimate Quest supplement looking at the fortunes and hopes of our local clubs ... a ground-breaking publication in collaboration with our equally committed neighbouring local newspapers the Buloke Times and North Central News.
Dakota Martin, Indi Simpson, Tyson Blair and Chantelle Badenhorst with college principal Danny Forrest and RSL members after tbeing named recipients of the inaugural scholarships. LH PHOTO rest said: “The students will have the greatest experience and gain a deeper understanding of the sacrifice that soldiers made for our country. “Students will be able to explore how difficult it was (at Kokoda) for those soldiers. They will have an experience to bring back and share with our school and in our local communities,” he said. Among the Australian deaths at Kokoda in 1942 was Corporal Donald Howlett, aged 17, the age Tyson Blair will be when he goes
to Papua New Guinea in July. “We will go to honour the spirit of the Australian soldiers and I hope we come back with a courage and determination to live that honours them,” Tyson said. “We have been told that Kokoda is one of the hardest tracks to walk in the world. Being fit will be the challenge.” Chantelle said the walk would help the quartet “pay our respects and have us outside our comfort zone, testing our mental fitness. “They (the soldiers) fought and
died for our country ... a country that would be peaceful and a free country,” she said as recipients chatted on Wedderburn’s Soldiers’ Memorial Park on Monday. Indi said: “I am looking to the experience and gaining knowledge - being aware of what the soldiers did and the conditions they faced.” She said the Kokoda experience would expand her interest in war history that had already explored the Vietnam War.
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