Trekker Christy King tells of the terrifying Black Cat trail attack that left two dead Christy King, second from right, with Trekkers of the Papua New Guinea Black Cat trail. CHRISTY King had mobile phone coverage. This was one of two breaks that fell her way in the late-afternoon of September 10: the other was that she still had a phone at all. She stood in a jungle clearing, a camp site turned into a crime scene. Chaos had been brought to order. Up to two dozen men huddled nearby. They lay groaning, dazed and altered by a madness that had sprung, like ghosts from the drizzle, in a whirl of machetes and balaclavas. Two men were dead. King, a former nurse, was in charge of triage and escape. The dual roles were not in her job description. At 38, she was a mother of three young boys, a fitness freak who had caught the "trekking bug" several years earlier. It had seemed a natural fit to be a tour guide for PNG Trekking Adventures on the Black Cat trail. Yet as she has since told friends, this, her first day at work, would probably be her last day. She had counted three attackers: others saw six. They had slashed packs and legs and arms. They yelled for cash, but they hunted, too: why they hacked at skulls and torsos _ "thump, thump, thump" _ remains unclear. Sleep! Sleep!" the lead "raskol" repeated in a pidgin term for lying down. Rifle butts slammed heads. Boots broke ribs. King was whacked on the arms when she identified herself as the group leader. Well-placed observers, even 12 days later, dispute the bandits' motives. The Papua New Guinea highlands are the "final frontier," they agree, where violence is a usual tool for conflict resolution. Yet terms such "payback" and "turf war" have nestled beside the plainer motive of robbery. "Sitting ducks"? "Totally predictable"? These views do not sit well with the official line that this attack was a "one-off" aberration. "This is about rivalries, it's not about robbery," says a well-placed source. It's about a lack of education on the tourism industry and what it can bring. Why would all the white people walk out of the jungle, observers wonder, while the porters' legs had been sliced so that they could not? Should foreign trekkers have been there at all? The needless terror of the ambush was unprecedented. Why so much bloodthirst? Even if such rage was driven by tribal jealousies _ which can be both muddled and petty _ the usual lines of such engagements had been ignored. Tribesmen in PNG. Picture: Luke Marsden. None of this mattered in the minutes following the encounter. King started making phone calls. She reached Tim Vincent, an ex-pat adventure tour operator in Wau. Vincent was a close friend of her and her husband, Daniel. He mistook her yelling for excitement. King had always been good "for a giggle about things." Vincent thought she was joking. There was no choice, he told her. Those who could must return to Wau, the town King's group left before dawn, past the wreck of the American B17 Bomber that every trekker ogles as a teaser for the six-day trip, and into the clammy stink of the jungle. Now they had to retrace their steps. King and seven clients, including five Melbourne men, had to follow their attackers out of the jungle. An hour's daylight remained. They must leave at once. King would tail the party, as is customary, checking over her shoulder for another ambush. No hands had shot up, understandably, when she asked for a volunteer to lead the group. Some of the tourists were ex-military. They had trained for months. The brochure had spoken of the "natural warmth and friendliness of the people." It had said nothing about hand-to-hand combat. Victorian Zoltan Maklary, 54, had been listening to music on an iPod in a tent when a knife opened his left arm. He had had no time to grasp the threat until he was stabbed again and again. Glenn Reiss, 47, had missed a Kokoda Track trek with ex-Transurban colleagues, Peter Stevens and Jon Hill, three years earlier with a bad knee. Rod Clarke, from the same Doncaster swimming club as Stevens' wife, had joined to make up trek numbers. Last week, back home, Clarke was deeply distressed by the death of a third porter, as was Stevens, who had been told the porter, lying in a hospital bed, died of a heart attack brought on by septicaemia. Trek leader Christy King has told of the horror of the Papua New Guinea Black Cat trail attack. Reiss said he was "pausing" after the drama. Stevens was grappling with the ordeal. "It's hard to think of them as humans," he said. The terror had lain not just in the violence itself, but in the fear of the escape. Would they be jumped again? King had stayed in constant phone contact with friends over the trek home _ that is, until she knelt down and lost her phone. Vincent had several calls go unanswered until he received a call from King's relatives in Australia. She had contacted them from one of the trekker's phones. The trekkers had bumbled on. They heard strange noises. They smelt marijuana, which they believe their attackers had been high on. For more than two hours, however, King and her tourists were alone in the darkness. Vincent met them outside Wau. He was confronted by wide eyes and stunned looks. "Welcome back to civilisation," Vincent told King. WHEN federal politicians Jason Clare and Scott Morrison trekked the Black Cat trail in April, they had fine chaperones. Two PNG police officers. Two SAS soldiers. A paramedic. "All the people we met were extremely friendly and welcoming," Clare says. The presence of local police had nothing to do with Clare and Morrison's status. Everyone gets them on Our Spirit tours, as well as the protection of the shotgun and the pistol they carried. It's been suggested to the Herald Sun that had that party encountered a raid such as that on September 10, there would have been deaths, all right _ all bandits, all by gunshot wounds. Local sources agree that PNG Trekking Adventures and King did everything right in a terrible situation. King's poise at the scene has been universally praised. Tim Vincent says the trek operator employed porters from every village along the trail, thus alleviating jealousies that always arise between tribes. He says there were no outside porters, a fact confirmed by Ninga Yawa, the Black Cat Trail Association chairman. "Every single trek you did, someone wasn't happy, but that's just the way these guys are, and the way they show that is not always particularly helpful," Vincent says. It's never come to this stage before, (but) there's never been any violence shown before . . . Trekking at Black Cat is an infant industry. Something like 30,000 tourists have covered the Kokoda Track since 2001: on the Black Cat trails, 200km north, perhaps 100 people tackle the 60km paths a year. It's a land of landslides and leeches. Gold brought white men, which explains the name _ the Black Cat mine dates from the 1920s. Errol Flynn waltzed through, to later decry nature's hostilities, then the Japanese tried and failed to push inland from the coast at Salamaua from 1942. In stories that ought to be better told, more than 100 Australians died here. Black Cat is Kokoda's poor cousin. The valleys and razorbacks are nature's keepsake to a forgotten history. There are two main trails. Military buffs scoff at the use (and Black Cat labelling) of the preferred Skindiwai Track (to the south, and where this attack occurred), which offers more war-time relics. The need for local knowledge cannot be over-estimated. Unwary tourists, who must carry cash for food and accommodation along the trek, pose an easy target to rogue elements. Last week, up to five raid suspects had been found. One theory goes that some of the "raskols" were jail escapees who had raped and killed. Another went that one of the killed porters had been a police witness against some of the attackers. A man thought to have harboured three of the suspects has since been hacked to death by the family of one of the slain porters: as Vincent says, PNG is a "raw" society. Some suspects were believed to be from the Bitoi River tribe _ a region that has complained that trekkers who use the more southerly track bypass their village and deprive them of tourism spoils. Vincent, however, favours a theory of a robbery that got out of hand. He says the truth must be told so that the bigger industry, from Kokoda to Black Cat, can explain the context to prospective clients, a point which echoes numerous trek operators: "It's a bad note for trekking in PNG in general. I think the impact will be felt across the country. Violence, or at least the threat of it, has been experienced by Australians on Black Cat trails before. Only in March, amateur historian, David Buckwalter, from Sydney, was ambushed by four men about four hours from Wau. They got off with cash and gear. Buckwalter recalls the twinkle of rounds from one of his attacker's mouths. Rivalries between tribes have long simmered in the Black Cat area. Operators have tried swapping porters at tribal boundaries, though such systems are unwieldy. Several operators state the region is "not ready" for international tourists. One well-placed source laments the absence of a regulatory body, such as that at Kokoda _ until it happens, he says, tribes will tend to act "wild" and "bloody primitive." Kokoda Track tour operator Frank Taylor abandoned trek operations at Shaggy Ridge, north of Black Cat, due to a "lack of experience" by the locals. "At Black Cat, they are very elementary in their approach, and violence is a resolution tool in that setting," he says. Another Kokoda Track tour operator, Brian Freeman, set out to walk the Black Cat Trail in 2005. Among his porters was Kerry Rarovu, one of the two killed on September 10. Freeman had some porters from outside the area. He was two days into the trek when he was warned to expect "trouble" ahead. He abandoned the trail and has not returned. "The same thing that happened last week could have happened to us," he says. He argues that the nature of the recent attack was "totally predictable." "No one should go there," he says. The whole industry needs to be looked at, to be honest. Christy King, originally from Bathurst, is resting in Australia, apparently in Sydney. Operators suggest Black Cat should not re-open until the causes of the attack are better understood. "It's gone now for the next four or five years," ventures one. Yet one operator is more optimistic. Late last week, Adventure Professionals maintained that the raid was an "isolated incident." One of the killed porters was its head guide. Still, the company would proceed with two Black Cat treks next year. "With our two ex-Military adventure leaders we will have security measures in place to allay your fears and ensure you enjoy this adventure for what it is - a Tropical Paradise," it explained.