The pitch

Since returning from the USA, I’ve put together a pitch for Penguin and included a photo of the book’s protagonist posing many years after the war for his official portrait as Director of the Australian Antarctic Division…

February 24, 1942 – after four days of fierce fighting in southwest Timor, nearly 1500 Australian, Dutch and British soldiers surrender to the Imperial Japanese Army. Some soldiers forge a path east to join forces with a company of Australian guerrillas fighting in Portuguese Timor, while others are never seen again. One group, a party of 29 Australian airmen left behind to keep Dutch Timor’s airbase operational for aircraft staging through to Bali and Java, manage to escape.

Bryan Rofe, a 23-year-old meteorological officer with no combat experience, younger than more than half of the group, becomes leader. With little more than a portable radio transmitter and basic supplies, the airmen head into the mountainous interior for a point along Timor’s rugged northwest coast in the hope of being picked up by flying boat. Little do the men realise that with Darwin raided, there is no means of escape.

Rofe’s men live off the land in a jungle teeming with Japanese, mosquitoes, deadly animals and Timorese loyal to the enemy. Every member of the party contracts malaria and dysentery and endures starvation. They subsist on rice, wild boar and goat, and three of the party will die of illness and another after being bitten by a snake. The rest are kept alive thanks to local inhabitants whose ancient customs compel them to risk everything to save the Australians. 

Then, two months after their escape and several abortive rescue attempts, with half his men dying and some hostile towards his leadership, Rofe receives an ultimatum sent via native courier from the Japanese. The enemy has been alerted to the airmen’s presence and 300 soldiers have been dispatched to hunt them down. For Rofe and his men, surrender is not an option but with the Japanese using violent methods to secure Timorese loyalty, the stranded party has little hope of survival. That is until Darwin signals hours later that an American submarine is en route to their position. 

Over two nights, completely surrounded by the Japanese, the brave American sailors attempt the most daring rescue of displaced Allied personnel conducted during the Pacific War. To keep the operation secret from the Japanese, details of the rescue were classified top secret and the story largely forgotten.

Seventy years on, Bryan Rofe’s grandson Tom Trumble set off on a journey to learn the truth of the stranded airmen and their Timorese and American saviours. He travelled into Timor’s remote northwest, met the decedents of the Timorese who helped the Australian airmen, crossed three continents, five countries and countless libraries and national archives and into the homes of the last remaining survivors.

Along the way Trumble learns about the submarine commander sent to rescue the men, the elite Japanese soldier sent to hunt them down and the grandfather he never met. It is a story of unbelievable human courage, leadership and cruelty and the extraordinary things that happen to ordinary men in war.

In Washington

I’m travelling through America, completing the final leg of my research for book number two. For the sake of this book, I’ve hiked from Kupang through to Kapsali in remote northwest Timor; eaten sushi with a Japanese scholar inSingapore; breathed the frigid air of the National Archives of Australia, the reading room of the War Memorial and almost every State Library in Australia; boarded an American submarine in Groton Connecticut; discussed Type Zero and Kittyhawk aircraft in Darwin; and spoken to the families of all the key participants (even the American ones) in this story. This book has required travel to three continents and five countries and I’ve loved every minute of it.

Now it’s time to write…

Long Legs of Spain

Long Legs of Spain, By Darren Matthews

In the final analysis, no one really cares about book sales and critical acclaim. All that matters is legacy. So what better way to ensure that your work will be remembered long after it goes out of print than a having a sculpture struck in its honour? Darren Matthews, formerly of Ford Motor Company now the proud owner of a Jim’s Mowing franchise on Victoria’s Surf Coast, whipped up this little masterpiece over four months and called it Long Legs of Spain. It belonged to an outdoor exhibition that coincided with the Aireys Inlet Festival of Words to celebrate the power of words. There were several sculptures dotted around town inspired by other works authored by festival guests but in my humble opinion, none were as impressive as this gem. The festival organiser’s kindly placed Long Legs directly outside my hotel (in the background) which proved a handy landmark when trying to locate my digs after the festival’s boozy dinner.

Long Legs celebrates my journey along the French route of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela – a journey recorded in my first book Unholy Pilgrims - and with the exception of a slightly wonky Portugal, Darren told me everything else was recreated to scale. The work is comprised of sandwiched tuscan stone and welded metals and can be bought for the bargain price of $1200. To date, that’s a greater amount than my total royalties!

Camino de Santiago de Compostela

Today is the Feast of St James.

For those on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, the reputed resting place of St James the Apostle in north-western Spain, it is a day of great celebration. When the Feast of St James falls on a Sunday (The Spanish call these years Holy, Jubilee or Jacobean years) pilgrims are in for a real treat. Time your run to Santiago in a Holy Year and you’ll be granted a plenary indulgence – a complete washing away of one’s sins. In every other year, such as this year, you’re only entitled to a partial indulgence where a third of your sins are cleansed. This means you needn’t worry about bearing false witness against your neighbour but you will still have to do time in purgatory for coveting your neighbour’s wife and, say, forgetting the Sabbath. Unfortunately I walked the Camino de Santiago in an unholy year so I have some work to do to clean the slate. I can either walk the Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome followed by a pilgrimage from Rome to Jerusalem; go on a holy crusade and take the sword to the Moors and the Saracens; or become a man of the cloth. I think I’ll just cut my losses and do time in purgatory.

This rather useless post is not intended as educational. It is, in fact, a shameless plug for my book Unholy Pilgrims, an account of my experiences along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. It’s available in all good (and bad) bookstores for $24.95. Thanks.

An audience with the King

Bakunase Palace stands defiantly in the hills overlooking Kupang Bay among a profusion of tropical plants and a menagerie of local wildlife. Gardeners holding spades and buckets of water scurry about tending to parched flora while eradicating weeds and, on occasion, loathsome pests. There are several houses on the palace grounds which are occupied by servants or members of the Rajah’s family.

(From Left) Mr Forkus, Rajah Leopold Nesnoni, Mr Ony

My guide, Mr Ony Meda, thought it might be worthwhile for us to pop in here to help in my research of a group of RAAF men stranded in Timor after it fell to Japan in February 1942. We were joined by Mr Forkus, my devoted and well lived driver. As we made our way towards the main palace which has, it must be said, lost much of its former glory, I asked Mr Ony who he planned to meet. I figured he had a Royal Archivist or some other equivalent who’d maintained records dating back to the war in mind.

‘The Rajah of Kupang,’ Mr Ony said. I suggested that it might be prudent to ring ahead and make a booking. ‘Why?’ he asked, ‘This is my king’. I tried to find an equivalent position, suggesting that, notwithstanding my status as a loyal subject of Queen Elizabeth II, it may be misconstrued as a touch unseemly for me to just rock up to Buckingham Palace in London to ask Her Majesty a few questions. Mr Ony shrugged and said, ‘This is Kupang, not London.’ I couldn’t argue with that.

A maid wearing a Guns ‘N’ Roses shirt met us in the drive and directed us to the front door of the palace. ‘The Rajah will be with you shortly,’ she said. We waited a few minutes under the awning of a house that was in need of a paint job and perhaps a rebuild. While Mr Forkus smoked a cigarette I inspected the holes the size of a fist that had appeared in the walls and the nails that were showing everywhere . There was another semi-detached building to our right which was in much worse shape. While its roof flapped like a sail pulled from its cleat in the wind, Mr Ony told me it was the Rajah’s private study. Perhaps, I thought, the Rajah was saving money on air conditioning.

The door behind us creaked open and a man in his late seventies peered out. He was a gaunt man in possession of all a king’s mannerisms: a puffed out chest; a proud, tilted carriage of the head and a discerning, slighlty dismissive gaze. ‘Selamat Pagi,’ said the Rajah as a gust of wind pulled back the roof of his private study threatening to toss it across the garden. He looked over our shoulder at his crumbling palace and frowned. ‘You should have made appointment,’ said the Rajah in English. I flashed a disapproving glance at Mr Ony. ‘But this is no problem, I meet all foreigners. It is my duty.’

We took off our shoes and squeezed into a three piece suite in a living room of cracked off-white tiles. There were photos of the Rajah shaking hands with President Susilo Bambang Yodoyono and other foreign dignitaries on a chest placed strategically in front of a wall that was looking particularly moth eaten. Water had leaked through holes in the roof which had left the walls a mottled brown mess.

‘Thank you for seeing us, Bakpu,’ said Mr Ony before explaining our business. The Rajah nodded and went to fetch some honey tea. Mr Forkus turned to us and said something in Bahasa Indonesian. ‘What did he say,’ I asked Ony.

‘He said he is related to the Rajah,’ said Mr Ony.

‘Are you telling me Forkus is royalty?’

‘No, no,’ said Mr Ony, before explaining that the Rajah’s father had a mistress who was Forkus’ grandmother.

The Rajah returned, we fell silent, electing not to tell him of his family connection to my driver. He broke into a staccato-like rendition of his childhood experiences during the war. An hour into the conversation, Mr Forkus fell asleep and began snoring. The Rajah was either oblivious or did not seem to care, he continued on. It was fascinating.

He showed photos of the Japanese being interrogated by the Dutch liberators at war’s end and other photos of local heroes. He provided copies of documents on his family history, of theses and articles written by Dutch and Australians, of contact names of local historians and anthropologists who might help with my research. He finished off by signing a copy of his portrait and handing it to me.

At the end of our meeting I asked how I might repay the Rajah for his help seeing as he waved away my donation towards the renovations of the palace. For the first time a genuine smile played across his face and he went to his bookshelf.

‘I want copies of this book,’ he said, holding up a copy of Tom Sadzeck’s Tennis Skills. ‘I want copies of other books on tennis and DVDs too. Also, if you can, please find me a DVD of a Wimbledon game.’

‘Any game in particular?’ I asked, jotting down the request.

‘I want men’s game and women’s game and,’ his eyes glazing over, ‘I want to see Maria Sharapova and Gabrielle Sabitini. They are my favourites, very beautiful.’ He sighed, absently. Mr Ony and I laughed, waking up Mr Forkus.

‘Why you laugh?’ asked the Rajah, the smile gone from his voice. ’You think I make funny or you think I homo or something?’

The king had spoken. It was time to leave.

Trumble in the Jungle

The dead snake of Manwalo

An Australian who finds himself near the village of Manwalo on the Kapsali River could be forgiven for confusing the region’s countryside with that of his own. The rich ochre colour of the soil, the white sandy beaches along the coast and the ubiquitous eucalypt are evocative of northern Australia.

I suppose this is unsurprising. Timor was once conjoined to Australia and is in close enough proximity to share the same length of wet season as the Top End. The dry southerly winds sent from Australia lend Timor her red-tinged coating and keep the dry season shorter than other islands of the Indonesian archipelago. The wet season too has the same transformative effects on Timor as it does in Australia.

Rainwater that falls across the peaks of Fatu Lao run down gullies and turn dried-out creek beds into raging torrents in a matter of hours. Villages and towns once open to the world become inaccessible by road. The village of Manwalo is once such place. Between October and March the only way in is by foot over a fiendishly difficult mountain pass or across snake and crocodile infested rivers. It is, to put it shortly, better to stay away until after March.

I came to Manwalo at the height of the dry season which was more a matter of dumb luck than preparation. This place, no more than a tiny smudge on the map, has a long and important connection to Australia. It was here that 29 RAAF airmen based themselves for six weeks, awaiting rescue by sea or by air.

My guide of 15 years experience, Mr Ony Meda, had ever been to this region of Timor. This troubled me. ‘It is very remote,’ Mr Ony had said while shrugging his shoulders. I asked how remote it could be. We were, after all, heading to a place less than 100 kilometres from the capital.

‘This journey might take many hours,’ said Mr Ony. ‘The roads can become very bad…very bad.’

The day before we left, I had asked Ony whether he managed to find a good driver. ‘One of Kupang’s best,’ he said. Such a statement needs to be placed in its proper context. The talent pool of quality drivers in Kupang is, it must be said, a touch shallow.

I met Mr Forkus smoking a cigarette outside my hotel. My first thought was he bore a striking resemblance to the Toyota Landcruiser he was propped up alongside – stout and solid. He smiled, let loose a cough which had sharp edges and hazarded a greeting in my mother tongue. Bahasa Indonesian was Forkus’ lingua franca and ‘hello’ was all he could manage in English. I appreciated his effort though.

Forkus drove his car hard, preferring to keep it in a lower gear for dynamic bursts of acceleration. He was hard on the brakes too, halting to within millimetres of moped wheels and car bumpers that slowed our progress and batting uncooperative motorists off our path with his high beams and horn. On the odd occasion we happened upon a bus or a truck, Forkus would use every inch of the road – and even quite a few inches off the road – to overtake. All the while he would be singing a husky rendition of Indonesia’s C-list chart toppers.

We covered the first 40 kilometres of the journey in record time along a road that could barely hold one lane of traffic. Once I’d settled into Forkus’ maniacal method of driving I found it all quite pleasant. Ony’s estimated travel time was grossly exaggerated. It wouldn’t take us ‘many hours’ to get to Manwalo, we’d be there in no time. That was before we hit the unsealed path.

The road from the village of Pariti to Manwalo is roughly 60 kilometres. It appears on the map as a thin squiggle that wends its way up the coast. Conventional wisdom holds that to cover that sort of distance would take less than an hour. It took us six. I developed great respect for Mr Forkus on that drive: he steered a course over giant moguls, through creek beds and along thin sections of road with precipitous drops on either side while chain smoking an entire packet of fags and reprising Bryan Adams’ 1980s songbook which has, incidentally, only just arrived in West Timor.

Trucks that come up here throughout the dry season lugging their heavy load of sand scooped up from the beaches along the northern coast for cement are responsible for the poor state of the roads. The torque needed to get trucks up steep embankments and over soft bitumen already broken up during the wet season puts wheels in a wild spin which in turn carves out gigantic potholes. The chicken buses that run from Naikliu near the East Timorese enclave of Oecussi don’t help either. We passed one bouncing along with kids sitting on the roof and hanging out the windows with bundles of food, clothing and luggage. I couldn’t help but think I was looking at a tragic news headline
just waiting to happen.

It’s difficult to say what triggered my feeling of queasiness – the state of the road; the smell of cigarettes; or the sound of Forkus singing Everything I Do, I Do It For You for the tenth time – whatever it was, we made Manwalo moments before I succumbed to the grumbling of the Nasi Goreng we ate in Camplong.

The village itself is comprised of a single road along which has been built a long fence of bamboo. Pathways led up to houses with cone shaped rooves of lontar palm and occasionally corrugated iron. There is no electricity or running water in Manwalo. Houses are lit by kerosene lamps and water is fetched from the village’s numerous wells.

We found a house that belonged to a village elder. We were told that he was the younger brother of Manwalo’s last Timukan (chief) who died twenty years ago. When Mr Ony explained our business in his village, he offered his house for us to stay in for the night and a meal of rice, chilli and chicken. We gratefully accepted.

While our host explained what he knew of the Australians who came to his village nearly 70 years ago, a large gecko materialised on the wall directly above me. This, I was told, was a happy portent: the gecko was the reincarnation of our host’s grandfather who built the house. His appearance above my head meant that my presence in the house met with his approval. It was just as well Ony explained. Had no-one translated the gecko’s significance I would have grabbed a pan and swatted that little critter.

Our host was not alive when the airmen came to the village but his older brother had told him the story. He said it was the magic man of the village who saved them. He cast a spell on the Japanese which concealed the Australians from their enemy’s sight. Mr Ony asked him whether there were others that were alive at the time who might remember the story. He said there was only one left, the son of the magic man, but it was too late in the day to rouse such an old man. We’d talk to him on the morrow.

We were directed into a room at the front of the house which had a single bed and a double bed. Mr Ony and Mr Forkus kindly offered me the single which I duly accepted; I didn’t like the idea of Forkus rolling on top of me in my sleep. As I dampened the kerosene lamp, Mr Ony turned to me and said, ‘Mr Forkus is known to snore a little.’ To say Forkus snores a little is like saying a jackhammer purrs. It was as if a mangy lion had crawled into his nostrils to die.

The night merged imperceptibly into the day as it does when one hovers between wide-awake exhaustion and intermittent dozing. We gathered for a meal of rice in the living area and then went looking for the son of the magic man.

To find out what he told me, you’ll have to read my book. It comes out in August, 2012.

A famous tourist in Kupang

William Bligh, 1814

Let us discuss William Bligh.

I downloaded the first book in the Bourne Trilogy on my kindle a couple of days ago for a little non-Kupang related reading. I felt that if anyone could steer my mind away from all matters West Timor it was Robert Ludlum. No sooner had I been swept up in the story, however, than I was thrust back to my present location with this sentence – ‘The skipper of the filthy, oil-soaked fishing boat was a foul-mouthed rendering of an insignificant Captain Bligh.’ Here the narrator is describing Claude Lamouche, the cantankerous captain of the cruise the amnesic Bourne character is sent to work on for a week on the advice of the drunkard Dr Washburn.

I shall now part with some wisdom that could only be of assistance in securing that elusive yellow pie or another roll of the dice in a game of Trivial Pursuit: Bligh made landfall in Kupang, or Coepang as it was spelt in 1789, in the open 23-foot launch he and those loyal to him were set adrift in after the mutiny on the Bounty, but more of that in a moment.

Few authors have sold as many books as Robert Ludlum. Estimates range between 300 and 500 million. He is as popular as popular writers get which means he generally uses accepted truths as points of comparison. In describing the vile Lamouche in such a way, Ludlum perpetuates the long-held view that Bligh was a tyrant. In recent times, (after The Bourne Identity was published) this view of Bligh has been challenged in a number of revised histories of the Bounty and a contention formed that it was in fact Fletcher Christian and the mutineers who were the miscreants.

Robert Dodd's depiction of Lt Bligh and his loyal officers and crew turned adrift on Bounty's launch on 29 April 1789

I am not equipped to weigh into this discussion and I don’t doubt that Bligh was ill-tempered and quick with the lash; a life in the Royal Navy will do that to you. But I find it interesting that so little of Bligh the seaman is discussed. Maybe this is unsurprising given that most stories fall down on the side of Christian and the fact that Bligh was a remarkable sailor doesn’t tally with the desired image of the arch-villain whose cruelty and poor seamanship got the Bounty in trouble in the first place. But consider, for a moment, the skill involved in charting a 4000 nautical mile course across open sea in a seven-metre boat with neither charts nor compass. All that Bligh had was a pocket watch and a quadrant.

Over 47 days, the Bounty’s launch was chased by cannibals near Fiji and very nearly capsized in the monstrous swells through the Torres Strait and across the Timor Sea. Eventually, after enduring the harsh privations and malnutrition of weeks at sea, Bligh triumphantly stepped off his small launch and spent 49 days recuperating in Kupang. Five of the men loyal to him would die in the coming months.

Bligh's Breadfruit Tree, Kupang

Bligh left Kupang never to return again, but not without parting with a gift. The breadfruit tree seeds he’d collected in Tahiti, whose trees would yield the fruit the British had hoped might feed Carribean slaves, were sown around Kupang and became a hallmark of the town. The story goes that the first seed sown was on a hill that looked out across Kupang Bay. Locals believe that the breadfruit tree pictured here above the intersection of Sumoharjo and Kelimutu streets grew from the seeds of that original tree. It serves as a living monument to one of history’s greatest seaman.

A day at the consulate

You must be joking?!

Comparing places to home when abroad is, for me, inevitable. It is also a dreadful way to travel, coaxing out the more cynical inclinations of the traveller. Such a habit betrays a poor travel technique and will invariably lessen the travel experience. But then I’ve never been mistaken for a good traveller. I can’t help but feel that some things would just never happen at home.

Take, for example, the above image I snapped at a petrol station outside Kupang, West Timor. It struck me as odd that the only helmet-less occupant was the youngest of the family. I guess there has never been I high demand for helmets small enough to accommodate 5 month old infants . Before they took off, I think I heard the little one in the pink say the Bahasan Indonesian equivalent of, ‘Dad, you cannot be serious!’

Notwithstanding these noteworty differences, there are some things here which are stunning reminders of home. It would seem that morning news television, for instance, is presented exactly the same way the world over. The show I endure over my toast with pineapple jam each morning is anchored by a middle-aged man in a modish tie and a woman dressed in neo-conservative chic. They spend the awkward moments between each five minute bulletin engaging in a repartee full of fake smiles and giggling. They throw across to the sports presenter on the half hour who wears garish thick-rimmed specs and a stupid grin. He spends a few minutes talking us through the local badminton results before handing over to the weather girl who bursts into her forecasts with girl-next-door charm while waving her wand across the entire Indonesian archipelago. Then, after being treated to a live performance delivered by a local popstar who delights us with her latest synthesised single – a sound which induces the sensation of being drowned in golden syrup - we are back on the couch with our hosts. Its more the Indonesian equivalent of Kochie and Mel than Katie Couric and Matt Lauer. But nothing is as familiar to me in its hair pulling way than the excruciating difficulty of getting a bloody visa. Perhaps that is why I’m bald, I’ve spent too much time in embassies and consulates seeking the elusive stamp.

The saga began before I left Melbourne. I went in search for the East Timor Consulate on Flinders Street in Melbourne as directed on the website. Where I expected to find fluttering flags and smiling diplomats I found snotty nosed students hovering over economics books and laptops. Unless Victoria University has expanded its operations to running Melbourne’s East Timor Consulate, I was in the wrong place. Unfortunately, no amount of enquiries made to the university’s administration (another assembly of nightmarish bureaucrats) yielded any information as to the consulate’s relocation.

So, after wiping off all my phone credit on my mobile in a long and difficult conversation with the East Timor Embassy in Canberra, I was told that the Flinders St consulate had relocated to the top of Queen Street ‘years ago’. I resisted an urge to demand someone update the website for the good of East Timor’s tourist industry and hauled myself northward to find a man who told me that crossing the border from West to East Timor required a visa that could not be obtained on arrival. This rule has come into effect in the last 12 months and is a monstrous inconvenience for disorganised
sods like me who leave all these things to the very last minute. Given that I
was leaving for West Timor the following day, I was told to organise my visa at
the East Timor consulate in Kupang. What staggers me in hindsight is that I
left that place in a carefree manner assuming all my problems were solved.

Contrary to the advertised 9am-12pm and 2pm-4pm opening hours of the consulate in Kupang, I have found on my several trips out there that the consulate in fact operates on a schedule that changes on a daily basis. I can only assume that successfully anticipating the actual narrow window of opportunity to get into the place is part of the visa application process. After a few narrow misses (I have been out there four times now) I found myself speaking to someone inside who told me that I needed, in addition to my many forms, an original passport-size photo. I was directed to a photo place
in a shopping mall up the road which in all likelihood gives kickbacks to East Timor
for all the business they are getting. The consular official, an unsmiling lass who
spoke with a sneer, told me that the men at the gate would let me back in on my return to complete my forms.

I wandered outside and hailed an ojek (moped taxi) who offered me a sweet deal on a return trip. We zoomed off in the direction of the shopping mall, ghosting our way between narrow gaps that opened up on the road. The bike we were on was so old that
the brakes struggled to accommodate the extra weight on board. On two occasions
I noticed the driver put his feet on the ground so as to prevent us from rearending a truck. When we got to the shopping mall I paid the ojek driver the full amount and told him that I would be here longer than originally planned. There was no way I was getting back on that bike.

I found the photo place without too much difficulty, but anticipated problems when the young girl behind the desk couldn’t speak a lick of English. It turns out trying to convey that you need a passport size photo for the purposes of obtaining a visa is no easy task. After minutes of head shaking and shoulder shrugging I was led into the photo studio. It must have been the most excrutiating photo shoot of this girl’s life.

The photos that were on display were of women modelling some new fashion, brides on the big day and happy families gathered at picnic sites and on the beach. When I refused to smile (I mean, you can’t be smiling on your passport!) she got down on the
ground to try and improve the angle. It felt like I was posing for Vogue. The only way I could think of conveying the sort of photo I was after was by framing my head and shoulders with my hands. She thought this was an improvement, so took photos of me in this pose.

Eventually I had a long-overdue thought and pulled out my passport and I pointed at what I needed. The penny dropped. She did what was required but not before photo shopping my image. All moles, wrinkles and other blemishes were rubbed out and the colour of my maroon shirt was tinted pink. I pointed at the revised colour of my apparel and she pointed at my shirt and gave a this-maroon-colour-is-awful frown. It seems my fashion sense is as poorly received in West Timor as it is in Australia. I paid her and left for the consulate.

I had no trouble finding an ojek on a more modern looking bike and just when I thought my luck was changing, the guys at the front gate of the consulate had locked up and
gone home. The fact that it was friday meant that I had to wait until today, a monday, before resuming the application.

The consulate was, of course, closed today at 2pm. But the man at the gate told me someone should be here at 3pm. I decided to wait it out and went to the petrol station next door. I bought a coke and found a seat alongside a man who might have been 100, rocking back and forth and clutching a UK passport and a visa application form. I didn’t ask him how long he’d been waiting. We sat silently together, me drinking a coke him just rocking. I noted with no small measure of disquiet, a petrol station employee filling up a car while smoking a fag.

At 3pm, the consulate miraculously opened. I helped the half-dead pom out of his chair, and together we ambled over to apply for our visas. I was ushered inside to find the girl with the sneer. She poured over all my documents and gleefully pointed out an error. I looked at her and smiled through venomous teeth, and said, ‘tell me, pray, what have I done wrong?’ She said I needed to produce a copy of my flight out of East Timor to satisfactorily prove I didn’t intend on outstaying my 30 day visa. I told her there was no risk of that happening. She didn’t believe me, so I asked if I could print out the flight on one of the computers sat idly on her desk. She laughed in that churlish way people do when they enjoy disappointing people. ‘This is a consulate,’ she said, ‘not an internet cafe.’

‘See you tomorrow,’ I sighed.

The kind villager, the hotel and the watch that kept on ticking

The land Bapak Mandala owned in Oesapa Besar, seven kilometres out of Kupang, had been in his family for generations. When the AIF’s 2/40 Battalion picked a spot on his property as its provisional headquarters in Dutch Timor he was only too happy to oblige. Sparrow Force HQ was eventually moved east into the hills in Champlong, but a base of operations was kept in Oesepa Besar.

Some of the most intense fighting in the first days of the Japanese invasion of Dutch Timor in February 1942 took place in Oesepa Besar. The unit based here was bombarded from air and sea and 20 Tasmanians were killed in the first day of fighting. Oesepa Besar very quickly became the front line in the Australian defence of Dutch Timor and although ultimately overwhelmed by Japan’s superior fire power, the position was held long enough for the dead to be buried.

When the Japanese captured Oesepa Besar, the man responsible for allowing the Australian soldiers to fortify the area was summonsed for interrogation. Bapak Mandala was last seen being led down to a beach somewhere along Kupang Bay. When his wife enquired as to his whereabouts, the Japanese officer in charge informed her that her husband had been executed for aiding and abetting the enemy. Her requests to bury his body were denied, in all likelihood his body had been incinerated with the Japanese dead, so Ibu Mandala searched the beach where her husband was last seen.  Eventually she came across a small spot stained with blood and littered with human hair. She gathered as much hair as possible and Bakpu Mandala’s mortal remains were put to rest in a tiny grave dug as far away as possible from his executioners.

In September 1945, not long after the Japanese surrender, a delegation from the Commonwealth Graves Commission was sent to Dutch Timor to carry out its obligations of burying Australian war dead in accordance with its 1917 Charter. The bodies of the 20 Tasmanians buried at Oesepa Besar were exhumed, identified and re-interred below a cross with the soldier’s name and rank and the rising sun bayonet of the AIF impressed into its face.

Sometime later the decision was made to relocate all Australian war dead buried in Timor to the Ambon War Cemetery and Memorial. In the intervening years, some of the graves in Oesepa Besar had been cleared to make way for Kupang’s urban sprawl and some of the head stones and bodies were lost. Those charged with identifying the dead scoured the area and believed they accounted for all the bodies but not all the headstones. The matter was dropped and the old war grave was forgotten.

When Australian William ‘Bill’ Scott came to Kupang in the 1980s and fell in love with Lena Mandala, daughter of Bakpu Mandala, he decided to make Oesepa Besar his home. He married Lena and poured his money into building a small hotel and named it Hotel Ti’i Langga. Bill and Lena had a daughter and Bill happily retired and lived out his life in Kupang.

Shortly after her husband’s death, Lena expanded her base of operations into Dili and renovated the Ti’i Langga. While construction workers cleared land to lay new foundations on Lena’s property, they unearthed human remains and a cross with strange symbols embossed on its face. A gathering of local elders ensued and the story of the Battle of Oesepa Besar and the cemetery that once kept the war dead was recalled. Upon examination of the remains, one of the elders spotted a watch attached to a wrist. Sixty years after its owner was killed and hastily buried, the watch was still ticking.

The local authorities were alerted and a message was sent to the Australian embassy in Dili. A military attaché was sent into West Timor to formally receive the remains of the Australian soldiers who were reunited with their dead comrades in the Ambon Cemetery.  The military attaché deemed it appropriate that the original cross of Private Ronald George Pinkerton of the 2/40 Battalion should be left on its original site given that a headstone had long been mounted upon his grave in Ambon. So the attaché placed the care of the cross in the sensitive hands of Ibu Mandala. Just as her father had many decades ago, Ibu Mandala gave up a piece of her land for Australia, placing the cross at the entrance of the Hotel Ti’i Langga. It serves as a haunting reminder of the tragedy that ensued in Oesapa Besar nearly 70 years ago.

The guns that stayed silent

These two 6 inch Mark XI naval guns situated in Klapalima in the hills above Kupang comprised the Australian heavy artillery used to defend the Dutch Timorese capital against a Japanese invasion by sea. Before Kupang’s urban sprawl encroached on their fixed positions, these guns had an unimpeded view across the Bay of Kupang. The guns, taken from the HMS Hibernia and HMAS Sydney (1), were manned by the 2/1 Heavy Battery . The armour-piercing shells they shot had enough fire power to sink a Japanese transport or destroyer.

The only navigable course through the Bay of Kupang deep enough to accommodate a large Japanese boat was through a channel from the west which traced a line directly in front of Kupang’s old town. This was a huge advantage for any occupying force because it reduced the size of the target area. With this in mind, the top brass decided to point the guns north in that vicincity so that enemy ships would pass directly through the guns’ crosshairs. The tradeoff was that the guns were left horribly exposed to an air attack.

The Japanese had sent Zeros on reconnaissance missions over Kupang prior to invasion to evaluate Australia’s defence capabilities and could clearly make out the naval guns. We know this because at 8am on February 20, 1942, the first wave of Japanese bombers did a beeline for the 2/1 Heavy Battery’s fixed positions. The guns miraculously survived the onslaught, but the officer in charge, Major Athol Wilson, was seriously wounded in the attack. Athol would later die of his injuries.

In the confusion of the bombing onslaught and the incapacitation of the artillery unit’s senior officer, Captain Alan Carrick assumed command of the Heavy Battery and reported that both guns were destroyed. In fact, the threat of imminent invasion prompted each gun crew to carry out a standing order to disable the guns lest they fall into enemy hands. The breach mechanisms and other vital parts were duly destroyed and the big guns of the 2/1 Heavy Battery went out without firing a single shot.

Bapak Rafael (pictured alongside one of his beloved guns above) lives in the vicinity of the guns and has long since taken it upon himself to preserve this local history. He has erected a barbed wire fence around each gun and keeps the area clear of rubbish and wannabe vandals. The Indonesian government eventually placed him on a monthly stipend of 250,000 Rp (about $35Aus) in recognition of his work.

Once the Japanese captured Dutch Timor, fixed defences were set up in areas that provided concealment and protection from Australian air attack. Timorese men were forced into manual labour on pain of death and ordered to carve out caves and shelters in the sides of hills and mountains. The shelter built to accommodate the massive gun pictured below made it invisible from the air.

Great effort obviously went into carving out as large a portal as possible to give the gun maximum range and scope without compromising concealment or the protection the cave’s roof provided from RAAF bombers. The chamber inside was big enough to house a large platoon of men in the event of air attack. The ground in this area is hard coral and chiselling it out in Timor’s humid and oppressive heat would most likely have claimed lives. No official record was kept of Timorese dead from the time of Japanese invasion to the end of the war. Estimates hover between 30 and 70 thousand.