If Gallipoli was Australia's baptism, then Kokoda was its confirmation.
"At Gallipoli we fought for Britain and lost; at Kokoda we fought for Australia and won," said Charlie Lynn, director of Sydney's Kokoda Track Memorial.
He was speaking on a proud day for the memorial, where an historic Australian flag was raised 67 years to the day after it fluttered above Kokoda when Diggers retook the PNG village from Japanese forces in a turning point of World War Two.
The flag was brought to Sydney by Soc Kienzle, whose late father Captain Bert Kienzle, a plantation owner at Kokoda before the outbreak of war, played a key role in organising the famous native carriers or "fuzzy wuzzy angels" who made the victory possible.
"My earliest memory of the flag is when I saw Dad take it to a safe at the plantation," said Mr Kienzle on Tuesday.
"There were two safes but the bottom one was a no-go zone.
"Only he had the key."
Mr Kienzle recalled contemporary accounts of the flag's original appearance at the burnt-out Kokoda village on November 3, 1942.
"There was no cheering and no bands," he said.
"The Diggers were haggard and half-starved.
"Wearing ragged, mud-stained uniforms and grimy, stained bandages, they stood quietly to attention in the rain.
"I'm sure Dad would be proud to see the flag raised here."
It was raised by a Kokoda veteran, alongside a PNG flag raised by a surviving "fuzzy wuzzy angel".
Mr Lynn, a NSW upper house MP, said the Kokoda Diggers had fought in the worst conditions imaginable and forced the enemy to retreat.
"They stopped a threat which, if successful, would have exposed the entire Australian mainland to invasion," he told Tuesday's gathering at the memorial in Concord, in Sydney's west.
"It was the turning of a tide that could well have engulfed a young nation.
"They fought overwhelming odds yet they were not overwhelmed.
"It's been said that the first Anzacs created a nation but Kokoda saved a nation."
Mr Lynn praised the 10,000 Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels.
"They were paid 10 shillings a month," he said, "and we would have been defeated without them."
The Australian Army's Force Commander, Major General David Morrison, said over 600 Diggers were killed in the Kokoda campaign and thousands wounded or stricken with tropical disease.
Around 6,000 Australians now made the Kokoda Track pilgrimage every year.
The bravery of both Australian and PNG nationals had served as "beacons for us to discern our path".
