The prospect of a mine at Kokoda seems to blur the boundaries of colonial and post-colonial Papua New Guinea for the Howard government. What do you do when an ‘enduring image’ of your ‘national spirit’ lies outside of your control? Offer development funds equal to any offered by a gold mine (estimated at Aus$1.7 billion)? or try to have the location listed as a World Heritage site (costing Aus$15.9 million). The latter, in effect, creates a set of expectations for the protection and maintenance of the trail. But its a cheap way out for the Australian government. Wouldn’t it be better if we could reverse those dollar figures? What sort of interventions would that make in how we value the physical world?