14 November 1942

The Australians are temporarily held up by the swollen 100-metre wide Kumusi River, which proves a greater obstacle than they had anticipated.

Its strongly flowing currents hamper the engineers as they build a precarious wire walking bridge after strong swimmers had made the connection to the other bank.

In the meantime hundreds of Australians troops mill around at the bottleneck waiting for the bridge to be completed so they can continue their advance to the Japanese strongholds at Buna, Gona and Sanananda.