Walk With Us: Kokoda Series
Walk With Us is a landmark documentary series that retraces one of the most brutal and defining campaigns in Australian history — the Kokoda Trail — through the eyes of those walking it today. Across ten episodes, the series weaves present-day journeys with living memory, archival history, and deeply personal stories of service, sacrifice, and resilience. More than a war story, Walk With Us is an emotional, cumulative journey about what is carried forward — by veterans, families, and a nation — long after the fighting ends. This is Kokoda not as a lesson, but as an experience.
About the Series
Walk With Us: Kokoda is a ten-part premium documentary series that follows two men’s mental health groups as they walk the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea — retracing one of Australia’s most defining World War II campaigns while confronting their own battles with grief, trauma, identity, and purpose.
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Structured as a chronological journey along the trail, the series unfolds day by day, episode by episode, mirroring both the physical progression of the trek and the internal transformation of those undertaking it. From the moment the groups arrive in Papua New Guinea, Kokoda is established not simply as a location, but as a living force — a place where history, sacrifice, and personal reckoning collide.
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The early episodes ground the audience in the legacy of the Kokoda Campaign, contextualising its significance through grounded historical storytelling while introducing the modern-day participants and the deeply personal reasons that have brought them there. As the journey begins, early optimism gives way to physical strain and emotional exposure. The trail quickly strips back defences, revealing what each person is carrying beneath the surface.
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As the series moves deeper into the jungle, immersive vérité footage and first-person testimony are interwoven with site-specific history. Key battle locations — including Imita Ridge, Ioribaiwa, Brigade Hill, Eora Creek, and Isurava — become emotional and narrative anchors, where the lived experience of WWII soldiers is brought into direct conversation with the struggles of the present. The terrain itself shapes the storytelling: punishing climbs force silence and introspection, river crossings generate chaos and vulnerability, and moments of rest open space for reflection, connection, and truth.
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Midway through the series, a profound shift occurs. While the physical challenge remains relentless, the emotional landscape changes. The trail begins to teach quieter lessons — about service beyond the battlefield, the cost of war carried home, the meaning of community, and the responsibility of remembrance. Encounters with local Papua New Guinean communities and porters deepen the narrative, revealing the enduring bonds forged during the campaign and the shared humanity on all sides of the conflict.
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In the final chapters, as the group approaches Isurava and then Kokoda itself, the journey turns inward. Letters from loved ones, moments of grief long deferred, and silent acts of support culminate in an earned understanding of sacrifice — one that cannot be accessed through history books alone. Arrival is not framed as triumph, but as reckoning. Finishing the trail does not resolve the journey; it reframes it.
Walk With Us: Kokoda is not a series about finishing a trail. It is about earning an understanding of sacrifice — and carrying it forward.