While Australia's national gaze turned to the Prime Minister's Anzac Day commemoration visit to the Kokoda Track, elsewhere in Papua New Guinea local farmers have marked another enduring connection between the two nations.
The latest 142-strong cohort in a SunRice-backed irrigated farming course run by PNG rice company, Trukai Industries, has just graduated from their year-long Smart Farmer training program.
Rice is a national food staple in PNG and Trukai is one of the nation's best known food brands - almost outranking Coca-Cola.
The company is 70 per cent owned by SunRice, which established the business 54 years ago in partnership with local investors.
About 70pc of PNG's domestic rice sales are sourced via Trukai's packing and distribution businesses, now including grain grown and milled locally as part of a fledgling local rice farming industry.
Varieties trialled by SunRice's North Queensland subsidiary, Blue Ribbon Rice, have been crucial to efforts to kick-start rice production in the rainy, tropically hot and mountainous New Guinean agricultural setting.
The Burdekin Valley program, which tests varieties from Asia, Africa and further afield, has built on decades of rice breeding and growing research at Rice Research Australia's Jerilderie property, Old Coree, in southern NSW.
PNG is the biggest of a multitude of export markets for SunRice, the southern NSW-based farmer-owned rice and stockfeed processing and marketing heavyweight which also operates milling and trading operations in the US, Vietnam and Jordan.
PNG's Smart Farmer program is a five-year partnership between Trukai, the PNG University of Technology and the Pacific Adventist University.
It began two years ago, following on from SunRice cropping efforts initiated more than a decade earlier.
Its latest graduation event was the highlight of Trukai's rice field day at Erap, near Lae where the company's main processing plant is located.
It showcased Trukai's investment in farming and production and commitment to working closely with local farmers to enhance their rice cultivation and other crop production skills.
Trukai chairman and SunRice grower director, John Bradford, said participants in the subsidised TAFE-style training course learnt not just the technicalities of rice production, but also how to use rotations with maize, and soybeans and other legumes, to broaden their income and diet options and improve soil nutrition.
"Crop fertility is actually a big challenge in many parts of PNG because they get so much rain the nutrients are easily leached from cropping soils," he said.
Mr Bradford said helping farmers develop agronomic capacity, including appropriate weed control and fertiliser use options and finding the best varieties for local conditions were just some of the many early stage steps required for the emerging industry.
The most recent season produced more than 90 hectares of local crop, although larger areas have been cultivated.
About 800ha of land has so far been allocated for commercial rice farming.
Unlike Australia, the tropical conditions enable two crops a year, however the hot and humid weather also promotes rapid weed growth challenges.
"It's not easy - the weeds turn into trees almost overnight," Mr Bradford said.
"There are also distance and terrain issues to deal with, and the lack of regional infrastructure makes it difficult to transport inputs like fertiliser and equipment," he said.
Rainy weather meant careful attention had to be paid to dealing with the grain's high moisture content (25pc) after harvest.
"It will take time to develop a self-sufficient industry, including for Trukai to get the right infrastructure established to dry and store the crop," he said.
"However, partnering with the Smart Farmer Program has given SunRice a wonderful opportunity to support the development of PNG's domestic industry.
"SunRice sees a strong future for the PNG rice industry and looks forward to our ongoing relationship with the program and the rice farmers it is developing."
He said the strong historical ties between PNG and Australia, including the poignant bonds moulded in wartime and SunRice's long prominence in the market, meant "it's not hard for Australians to make friends in New Guinea".
"The farmers and others we deal with know we're working to do the right thing. We have a great relationship with the people in this country," he said.
"Yes, other countries are making efforts to get a foothold with trading ambitions in the market, but words are pretty cheap.
"Actions mean much more."
Mr Bradford noted Trukai Industries ran one of PNG's most extensive agricultural programs and had invested millions of kina in rice research, science, technology and development for 30-plus years.
He congratulated the latest graduates and the Trukai and university agronomy teams, particularly Trukai's rice development manager, Aina Davis.
Ms Davis had leveraged support from Rice Research Australia in terms of expertise, trial experience, research and access to internationally developed varieties that suited local conditions.
She was recently in Australia as a guest speaker at the Australian rice field day, Rice X, at Jerilderie.
Andrew Marshall
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
