BEFORE he was farming at Wantabagdery, Allan Druett served with the Third Militia Battalion in Papua New Guinea (PNG), playing a role in the defence of the village Oivi.
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After the war, he settled a 485-hectare parcel of land, which he named after the village.
More than 70 years after the battle, Mr Durett's daughter Colleen Druett-Webb retraced her father's footsteps along part of the Kokoda Track through PNG's Owen Stanley Range.
Trekking from Kokoda to Isurava and the Isurava memorial, Ms Druett-Webb said the track was a tough endeavour as a hiker through dense jungle - let alone carrying a weapon and worrying about enemy soldiers.
She said the walking the track gave her a new appreciation of what the soldiers went through.
"I climbed The Rock before I went - that's nothing, everywhere you go, you're going uphill," she said.
"You just wonder, 'how did they do it?'.
"You're walking on roots of trees and it's so steep, you keep climbing up and you think it'll be great once you get to the top, but when you get to the top, it just keeps going up."
After completing his training in Newcastle, Mr Druett was fortunate enough to have landed at Port Moresby on the only day it was not under fire from the Japanese.
Mr Druett fought in the seven-day siege at Oivi village, and was among the soldiers there suffering from malaria, dengue fever, yellow jaundice and scrub typhus.
His sergeant sent him to hospital and he walked 16 kilometres to Kokoda village and was airlifted to hospital where he spent six weeks recovering.
While he was sent back to Australia, Mr Druett returned to PNG to support the war effort driving ambulances in the 18th Field Ambulance division.
During her trek, Ms Druett-Webb planted a tree at the village of Oivi to mark her father's service during the war.
"It's nice to be able to come back and share it with him and to talk to him about it."
