5 Kina - Elizabeth II Defense of the Kokoda Trail, Silver Proof issue

The Kokoda Track campaign of July–November 1942 saw Australian and Papuan infantry — vastly outnumbered by Japanese forces — fight a grinding retreat followed by a counter-offensive across some of the most punishing terrain in the Pacific theatre. The track itself crosses the Owen Stanley Range at altitudes above 2,000 metres through near-constant rain and mud. Japanese forces came within 50 kilometres of Port Moresby before supply lines collapsed and momentum shifted.

This 1982 proof issue appeared forty years after the campaign, during a period when Papua New Guinea's commemorative program was largely handled through the Franklin Mint under contract arrangements common to newly independent Pacific nations of the era. KM#20a designates the .925 silver proof variant, distinguished from the base metal circulation strike.