Private George "Dick" Whittington of Queensland was with the 2/10th Battalion and had been wounded in action during the vicious and bloody beachhead battles around Buna.

He had been temporarily blinded after being shot by a sniper above the eye and was being guided by Raphael Oimbari along a track through the tall kunai grass to a casualty clearing station.

It was mid-afternoon, and New Zealand photographer George Silk was walking along the track towards the beachhead battles when he saw the column of wounded men coming towards him.

He stepped to the side, quietly took the photograph of Whittington and Oimbari, and the procession moved along. Silk wasn't going to disturb them, but at the last minute ran back to get the wounded soldier's name.

The photograph would become one of the most iconic images of Australians in the Second World War.

Dr Lachlan Grant, a senior historian at the Australian War Memorial, said it would have an enduring impact on the way Australians saw their nearest neighbours.

"It's so powerful because it's got that humanitarian element to it," he said. "It's a photograph during wartime, but it's not of the conflict; it's of someone helping out someone else who is in need."

Although Silk documented the soldier's name, Raphael Oimbari wasn't identified until after the war.

"His identity was unknown until the 1970s when 'Dick' Whittington's widow put a call out in the media," he said.

"Whittington had recovered from his wound and returned to his unit, but he died from scrub typhus just seven weeks later.

"His widow wanted to identify who the Papuan was in the photograph so that she could give her thanks.

"Through her work, they were able to find out the identity of the carrier, and Raphael Oimbari went on to become quite a strong advocate for remembering the Papuan contribution to the war effort through the 1980s and into the 1990s."

After he was identified in the 1970s, Oimbari was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire within the Papua and New Guinea honours system and became a figurehead for the carriers.

Silk, an official photographer with the Australian Department of Information, went on to take a dramatic series of photographs of the fighting at the beachheads during the war, but his powerful image of Whittington and Oimbari was originally censored.

"The Australian authorities were very strict with their censorship, particularly with images coming back from the front line," Grant said.

"There was a reluctance to show images depicting the fighting and the war, and there was great frustration among Australian journalists. Some of them left Australian agencies to work for the BBC or other agencies where they felt they had more freedom to report on what was happening on the front lines."

Silk's photograph was eventually published in the American magazine Life in 1943.

Together with Damien Parer's award-winning films of the Kokoda campaign and Sapper Bert Beros's poem Fuzzy wuzzy angels, Silk's photograph helped shape Australia's view of the role of Papuans during the war.

"Pictures like this helped transform the way in which Australians thought about our nearest neighbours, and it is something that is still quite enduring to this day," Grant said.

"It really put the plight of Papuans in the forefront of the minds of Australians at home and painted them in a way that showed that they were there helping Australian troops who were in need."

Today, the image of Oimbari and Whittington forms the basis of the national memorial in Port Moresby and features on a medal the Australian government issued to the carriers.

"A photograph such as this is used as a symbol by both countries to emphasise the friendship and the very close history that Australia and Papua New Guinea have, but it's often a lot more complex, and that's something that is often widely misunderstood," Grant said.

"Silk's image is one of the great Australian images, and it's one of the most iconic Australian images of the war, but there's a much bigger and more complex story behind the Australian and Papuan relationship during the war than what is conveyed in just this one image."

Papuans also served as combatants with the Papuan Infantry Battalions, and others undertook technical training, working as radio operators and nurses.

"From the Papuan perspective, it would have been a very confusing period, and certainly the war that was being fought, wasn't their war," Grant said.

"Often the men had to go to work as labourers, or were taken away, and sometimes whole villages were moved to build things like airfields.

"In other areas, particularly Japanese-occupied areas, the Japanese army took away all the food that had been collected and all the crops, so it was a very difficult time for the Papuan communities living on the front lines during the three and a half years of war in New Guinea.

"They had to choose the side they thought would be best to help them, their families, and their communities survive the war.

"They had to make very difficult decisions, and I think that's one of the reasons this photo is comforting for Australians at home; it shows a Papuan who's obviously assisting an Australian in his time of need.

"It really is one of the most iconic images of Australia in the Second World War."