To any trekker passing through Efogi 1 on the way up/down Mission Ridge from Brigade Hill, will most likely visit the little museum located in the centre of the village. Among the relics of bayonets and Bren guns there is a cardboard box with what is left of an Australian soldiers boot.
Australian army boots of WW2 vintage are easily identified by a cross stitch running across the toe of the boot.

Inside these boots at Efogi are human remains, which look to bones from the foot perhaps the Talus and Calcaneus.

The battle of Brigade Hill claimed around 100 Australians either killed or missing between September 7 and 9 1942. In October of 1942 during the Australian advance 52 bodies were found and buried in the general vicinity, (where one would find the current plaque on the knoll of Brigade Hill).

Initially buried where they fell then later buried in a temporary cemetery on top of the knoll, these men where from the 21st Brigade made up of the 2/14th, 2/16th and 2/27th Battalions. They where later re-interned at Bomana Cemetery.

Until recently there where sticks placed in the ground showing the location of the original graves.


When the bodies where taken to Bomana by the War Graves commission it is reported that the only part of the body that must be removed was that of the skull and thigh bone. This is denied by the War Graves Commission and they have since conducted random examinations of the area where the original graves where located in order to refute this claim. There are many Australians who are not among those buried at Bomana and to this day still remain missing.

After speaking with the chap who found these boots and bones with his Grandfather back in 1992 it is possible that these are the remains of a missing Australian yet to be accounted for.