For him, Australian came of age later, at Kokoda, often called Australia’s Thermopylae, when a small group of young soldiers resisted the advance of Japanese army divisions that seemed set to take Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea and threaten the Australian continent. Keating believed that the fighting at Kokoda represented the real birth pains of an independent Australia, not some colonial appendage of Britain created to serve imperial purposes in the Far East.
这常常使他陷入自相矛盾中，但是这可以让我们懂得许多事情。比如，最近他谴责那种认为一战期间澳大利亚在1916年加利波利战役中的牺牲在某种程度上造就和赎回了他的国家的观点。在他看来，澳大利亚的诞生是在多年以后，在科科达，通常被称为澳大利亚的温泉关战役，当时一小群年轻士兵阻止了日本陆军的几个师试图占领巴布亚新几内亚的莫尔斯比港进而威胁澳大利亚大陆的进军。基廷认为在科科达的战斗代表了一个独立的澳大利亚真正诞生的痛苦，而不是英国为了它在远东的帝国利益而建立的某个殖民附属国。