In the mid and latter months of 1942, Australians fought alone against 10,000 battle-hardened Japanese soldiers as they marched over the Owen Stanley Ranges in Papua New Guinea towards Port Moresby. Then as now, Australia was considered not strong enough to defend itself - but it did.

The names of brave Australian soldiers who stopped the Japanese are carved on war memorials in country towns and outside of council buildings across Australia. We barely acknowledge their existence: Private Bruce Kingsbury (VC), Corporal Charlie McCallum, Lieutenant Colonel William Owen and Captain Sam Templeton, to name just a few.

Winston Churchill finally relented to urgent pleas from Prime Minister John Curtin for the return of Australian troops from the Middle East - but not before Churchill tried to divert them to Burma.

As the Japanese marched south towards the Kokoda Airfield, two largely untrained conscripted Militia battalions from Sydney were sent to defend it. These were the 39th and 53rd - approximately 500 men - called the ‘Maroubra Force’.

Their average age was 21. They were called ‘chocos’ because the public thought they would melt like chocolate soldiers in the heat of battle. Most of the 39th were home guard. They knew nothing about jungle warfare. Many had never fired their weapons. Now these warriors of the working day were defending Australia.

The mountainous jungles seethed with life. The trees formed a dark dripping canopy and the heat and humidity were stifling. Moss-covered trees lay over fast running streams as Australian soldiers, many born in cities, lay in dug-ins and waited for the enemy. Some shook with malaria while others held their guts, cramped with dysentery.

The Australians held the airstrip against 3000 Japanese soldiers, lost it, counterattacked, but were forced back to Isurava, 10 kilometres to the south. As they waited for reinforcements, more enemy troops made their way up the Track.

Just as it looked like the Maroubra Force would be wiped out, Brigadier Arnold Potts arrived with two battalions of about 1000 men: the 2/14th and the 2/16th. Potts was a short, tough and nuggety Western Australian farmer. He had fought at Gallipoli and in France in World War One and was a gifted military strategist.

The head of the Australian forces, General Thomas Blamey – who was safely ensconced in Brisbane - kept directing Potts to attack, but to do so would have been suicide. The Australians were undersupplied and outnumbered five to one.

The Japanese threw everything at them and pushed them further back. However, not before a string of extraordinary last stands, which yielded more Allied decorations than any other battle in the Pacific, including a posthumous Victoria Cross for Bruce Kingsbury.

One of the last gestures of defiance at Isurava was by Corporal Charlie McCallum, a farmer from South Gippsland. This is from Paul Ham’s book, ‘Kokoda’.

“McCallum sprayed the enemy with his Bren gun and when it ran out of ammunition, he grabbed a tommy gun from a dead mate, all the time firing in to the advancing Japanese. He was wounded three times but kept on firing. He killed 25 Japanese and received the Distinguished Conduct Medal. He died later on the track.”

The Australians fought a decisive game of cat and mouse. They attacked, broke off and attacked again. This was the Fabian strategy, after the Roman dictator Fabius Maximus, who fought a war of attrition against a much larger army led by Hannibal. Potts knew the difficulty of trying to supply an army over the mountains. It was a lesson he would teach the Japanese.

In the hour of greatest danger, the Japanese stopped. They had run out of food. The Japanese had relied on speed to capture Port Moresby and now their soldiers were starving and riven with disease. Potts’ defensive battles had exhausted their supply lines.

Potts’ strategy and the Australian victory at Milne Bay, left the Japanese with no choice but to withdraw. They were harried all the way back to New Guinea’s north coast, where they were wiped out.

When the 2/27th first arrived in New Guinea, it had 777 men. When it pulled out of Gona in January 1943, only 70 walked away. Everyone else was dead, wounded or hospitalised with tropical diseases.

Potts was sacked by Blamey on 22 October 1942, despite having demonstrated inspired disobedience in winning the withdrawal. He later commanded with distinction the 23rd Brigade of II Corps in Bougainville.

The Kokoda heroes believed in Australia and the future their country held. This is a covenant written in blood. Australians complain, ‘where is the vision? Where is the story?’. This is the vision. This is the story of how 1,500 men turned back the Japanese advance.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, remember Arnold Potts and the diggers who fought on the Kokoda Track.