Ian Burnet, page 1
Archipelago
A Journey Across Indonesia
A giant Dwarapala statue at Singhasari
Archipelago
A Journey Across Indonesia
Ian Burnet
ROSENBERG
First published in Australia in 2015
by Rosenberg Publishing Pty Ltd
PO Box 6125, Dural Delivery Centre NSW 2158
Phone: 61 2 9654 1502 Fax: 61 2 9654 1338
Email: rosenbergpub@smartchat.net.au
Web: www.rosenbergpub.com.au
Copyright © Ian Burnet 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher in writing.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Creator: Burnet, Ian, author.
Title: Archipelago : a journey across Indonesia / Ian Burnet.
ISBN: 9781925078602 (hardback)
ISBN: 9781925078701 (ebook : pdf)
ISBN: 9781925078718 (ebook : epub)
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Subjects: Indonesia--Description and travel.
Dewey Number: 959.804
Printed in China by Everbest Printing Co Limited
Contents
Acknowledgments and Maps
Glossary
Prologue
1 Malacca – Where West Meets East
2 Jakarta/Batavia – The Queen of the East
3 West Java – One of the Great Train Journeys
4 Central Java – The Greatest Monument in the World?
5 East Java – The Majapahit Empire
6 Northern Java – The Spread of Islam
7 Bali – The Island of the Gods
8 Lombok/Sumbawa – Across the Wallace Line
9 Komodo – Here There be Dragons
10 West Flores – The Austronesian Villages
11 East Flores – The Pope Visits Indonesia
12 Larantuka/Solor – Of Priests and Pirates
13 West Timor – The Arrival of the West Monsoon
14 East Timor – The Enclave of Oecusse
15 East Timor – Portuguese Dili
16 East Timor – Invasion and Resistance
17 Timor Leste – Liberdade!
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments and Maps
It has been seven years since I started this journey across the Indonesian archipelago and I would like to thank my wife Yusra Zahari Burnet and my daughters Miranda and Melissa, who despite their concern encouraged me to depart on this adventure.
Special thanks go to Toni Pollard and Sia Arnason who provided invaluable comments and corrections on the preliminary and final draft of this work.
Thanks also to Cathy Morrison who provided the author photo, to David Gamble for his advice on the maps and to Richard Mounsey for his help in Oecusse.
My thanks also to the librarians of the State Library of New South Wales, the KITLV/ Royal Netherlands Institute of South East Asian Studies Library in Jakarta, the Indonesian Heritage Society Library in Jakarta and the Australian National Library.
Photo Credits
Ian Burnet for all photos except for those listed below: page 50 Gunawan Kartapranata; page 52 Crisco 149; pages 2 and 62 Michael Gunther; page 65 Randall Rutledge; page 80 Arian Zwegers; page 82 (top) Chensiyuan; page 84 and back of jacket Schnobby; page 96 Raul 654; and page 171 Anna Voss, which are licensed under Wikimedia Commons.
Map Credits
Maps were created from OpenStreetMap by Ian Burnet.
Glossary
ais cendol
Iced coconut milk drink
APODETI
Timorese Popular Democratic Association
Bajau
A group of sea-people
bak mandi
Bathtub
bakmi
Wheat noodles
bakpau
Steamed bun
baso
Soup
becak
Trishaw
bihun
Rice noodles
CNRM
National Council of Maubere Resistance
Falantil
Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor
Fretilin
Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor
gamelan
Indonesian gong instrument
gunung
Mountain
jaladwara
Water spout
jamu
Herbal medicine
kampong
Village
kankung
Water spinach
Kopassus
Indonesian Special Forces
kris
Knife
lingga
Male symbol
martabak telor
Flour omelette
masjid
Mosque
merdeka
Freedom
mestizo
Mixed race person
ojek
Motorcycle taxi
Orang Belanda
Dutchman
Orang Betawi
Native of Batavia
rendang
Beef simmered in coconut milk
sambal terasi
Fermented shrimp paste
sarong
Printed waist cloth
sate
Skewers of meat
slendang
Cotton shawl
tais
Timorese weaving
UDT
Timorese Democratic Union
UNAMET
United Nations Assistance Mission to East Timor
warung
Small eating house
wayang kulit
Leather shadow puppet
yoni
Female symbol
Prologue
For me the east is contained in that vision of my youth. It is all in that moment when I opened my young eyes on it. I came upon it from a tussle with the sea – and I was young – and I saw it looking at me. And this is all that is left of it! Only a moment; a moment of strength, of romance, of glamour – of youth!
Joseph Conrad, Youth
I first arrived in Indonesia in January 1968 as a young geologist working on the first offshore oil exploration projects in the country. Brimming with excitement and ready for adventure, I too came upon Indonesia from the sea. I arrived at the port city of Surabaya, the home of the Indonesian Navy, then completely in disarray after the 1965 coup that killed key army generals and the ensuing military takeover ousting President Soekarno and starting revenge killings all over the country.
Map of the Journey across Indonesia
Growing up in Australia in the 1950s we were taught no Asian history or geography. Our closest neighbours were a blank space that we flew over on our way to the rest of the world. Before my arrival I tried to read as much Indonesian history as I could. I learnt about the seventh-century Empire of Srivijaya based in South Sumatra and the fourteenth-century empire of Majapahit based in East Java. I learnt about the United Dutch East India Company (VOC), Dutch colonial history and the Indonesian struggle for independence. However, when I arrived it was a revelation to learn that the Portuguese had reached the archipelago almost a century before the Dutch, so I became interested in the history of the Portuguese in the region and the traces of its remnant populations which still exist today.
The European settlement of Australia which created a ‘new world’ with only 200 years of imposed European history, is juxtaposed against the Indonesian ‘old world’ with its Asian traditions and thousands of years of history. There are no two neighbouring countries in the world that are as ethnically and culturally different as Indonesia and Australia. Indonesia is the most diverse nation on the planet with around 300 different ethnic groups speaking 583 different languages, spread across 17,000 islands, each having its own culture, language and often religion. The idea of a national language allowing all these groups to speak to each other started as recently as 1928 with the Indonesian Youth Congress declaring: One Country – Indonesia, One People – Indonesian, and One Language – Indonesian. Arriving here as a young man, amidst all this diversity, everything was new, exciting and so totally different that a lifelong interest in all things Indonesian began.
The Indonesian National motto, written in Old Javanese as ‘Bhinneka Tunggal Ika’ or ‘Unity in Diversity’, was coined when the Indonesian people fought for their independence from the Dutch Colonial government and is included in the 1945 Constitution. This unity was essential to winning independence from a colonial master; however, it has been strained in the following years by the attempts of separatist groups to secede from the nation, by the tendency of the Javanese to dominate the national consensus, and by those who want to declare Islam the national religion. But somehow unity has been maintained in this diversity of islands, peoples and religions which is Indonesia and long may it continue.
The Indonesian archipelago straddles the equator and extends from Sabang to Merauke. That is, from the island of Sabang off northern Sumatra to the town of Merauke on the eastern border with Papua New Guinea, a distance equivalent to the breadth of Australia or the United States. This arc of islands forms a ‘bridge’ between the continents of Asia and Australia which allowed f
Described as a string of emeralds mounted on an azure sea these lush tropical islands are characterized by a series of active volcanoes in Sumatra, Java, Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores and Alor. This is the most tectonically active area on our planet, as demonstrated by the earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis that regularly occur.
During my first years in Indonesia I dreamed of making a journey across the Indonesian archipelago to Timor and then to Australia, traversing the arc of islands, island by island, and adventure by adventure. However, life got in the way. There were paid air tickets home, then marriage, children, a career – there were always other priorities. In the intervening years I read and reread The Malay Archipelago by that greatest of all archipelago travellers, Alfred Russel Wallace. I read those books of Joseph Conrad which are set in the islands and are so evocative of the exotic East, as well as all the historical and contemporary travel books I could find. I also followed my interest in the history of the Portuguese since they were the first Europeans to live and trade in the area, and their descendants have kept their presence alive for the next 500 years in remnant populations in Malaysia, Indonesia and Timor Leste (East Timor).
My youth has gone, but the dream of that journey across the islands remained alive, and almost forty years later I decided to live that dream before it was too late. Older and wiser, I now had a purpose which, apart from the challenge of traversing the islands, was to describe some of the fascinating history and huge diversity of the Indonesian Archipelago and its people.
I will be traveling from Java towards Timor, and in the words of the Portuguese chronicler Tomé Pires, written in 1515:
All the islands from Java onwards are called Timor, for timor means ‘east’ in the language of the country, as if they were saying the islands of the east.
As they are the most important, these two from which the sandalwood comes, are called the islands of Timor. The island of Timor has heathen kings. There is a great deal of sandalwood in these two. It is very cheap because there is no other wood in the forests.
The Malay merchants say that God made Timor for sandalwood and Banda for mace and the Moluccas for cloves, and that this merchandise is not known anywhere else in the world except in these places.
My journey begins in Malaysia, in the city of Malacca because this is where West first met East, when in the sixteenth century the first Europeans arrived to settle in Asia. The Portuguese came in search of ‘Christians and spices’ and began to spread their trading network across the Eastern Seas as far east as Timor and as far north as Japan. My travels continue across the island of Java where the world’s great religions of Hinduism and Buddhism influenced its people, architecture and history before Islam arrived in the archipelago at the end of the thirteenth century. I then island-hop across the islands of the eastern archipelago from Bali, to Lombok, to Sumbawa, to Komodo, to Flores, to Solor, and finally to the troubled island of Timor.
In Indonesia religion has become part of everyone’s identity; everybody has to have an identity card which also states their religion. ‘Belief in one God’ is one of the founding principles of the nation and Indonesians have to be either Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Protestant, Catholic or Confucian. Administratively there is no such thing as an atheist, animist or a non-believer in modern Indonesia. When you meet Indonesians you will usually be asked in this order – Where do you come from? Where are you going? Are you married? How many children do you have? What is your religion? For Indonesians it is often apparent from your dress, your name or your ethnicity, what your religion is, but for a westerner these identifiers are usually missing.
Is this a travel book or a history book? It is neither, as it is a journey not just across geographic space but also through historic time as I discover the different history of each of the islands. The journey will be full of surprises. Who would expect that on the island of Bali, the vibrant Balinese culture has the largest population of Hindu believers outside of India? Who would expect that on the islands of the eastern archipelago such as Flores, Solor and Timor it is Christianity that has replaced their animist traditions? Why would the Pope make a state visit to the country with the largest Muslim population in the world? Who would expect that a ‘kingdom’ of Portuguese and Dutch renegades could have ruled parts of Timor and the eastern islands for hundreds of years? Or that the people of East Timor would gain their independence after twenty-four years of Indonesian occupation?
1 Malacca – Where West Meets East
An express bus makes the five-hour journey from Singapore to Malacca almost every hour. Passengers arrive, buy their tickets and the bus leaves. Of course I am running late and my frustration grows as the taxi slowly edges its way through the heat and humidity of the crowded streets. Nervous and sweating I run for the bus, jump aboard and slump into the last remaining seat as it moves away. You guessed it, ‘The Seat of Death’, right up front and opposite the driver. I reach around for the seat belt that may save my life and my heart sinks when it isn’t there. In the possible event that we are travelling faster than the vehicle in front, I imagine myself splattered all over its huge windscreen like some giant insect.
Map of Singapore to Malacca
I have taken this same journey forty years earlier and remember driving up the Malay Peninsula through endless rubber plantations with the monotony only broken by quaint Malay villages, with their wooden houses built off the ground on stilts and the children playing in the dirt yards. Well, now we have the monotony of driving on a new divided highway stretching in a straight line through endless palm oil plantations, without a quaint Malay village or any laughing children in sight.
Malacca has many cultural layers that are reflected in the people, their languages and the variety of traditional customs. From the Malay fishermen who first frequented its shores to the Malay sultans who ruled over an empire, from the Chinese, Indian, Javanese and Arab merchants who developed it as a major trading port, to the Portuguese, Dutch and British traders and then the colonial masters who followed them.
For me, Malacca is characterized by the narrow two-storey Chinese shop-houses, squeezed side by side, which line the streets of the town’s historic district. With clay-tiled roofs, wooden shuttered windows, and walls decorated with painted plaster reliefs, each shop-house has a sign over the door in gold Chinese characters on a black lacquered background, announcing the owner of the building or its function. Built on a long narrow floor plan, the shop-houses have an open stairwell in the centre of the building which allows air to circulate across the cool tiled floors. Walking the streets of the historic district I can see that many of these buildings now house shops filled with antiques and oriental treasures waiting to be discovered, others have been converted into museums, restaurants or boutique hotels and each has a fascinating history to tell.
Chinese shop houses, Malacca
I choose to stay in a small heritage hotel in one of these converted shop-houses. Entering it I cross a floor of Portuguese tiles which is magnificent in its colour and detail. The foyer is decorated with blue and white Chinese porcelain, carved rosewood furniture and antique brass lamps. The stairwell has a magnificent feature of green porcelain tiles depicting a Chinese dragon and my upstairs bedroom overlooks a delightful garden courtyard filled with the scent of frangipani.
It is Friday night and in a custom as old as Malacca itself, the citizens come out in the cool of the evening to promenade along Jonkers Street and enjoy the sights and sounds of the night market. People come for the coloured lights, for the aroma of spicy food cooking on the food stalls, for the sidewalk bargains, for the entertainers and the snake oil salesman, but most of all to see their friends, fellow citizens and perhaps to meet someone special. The sidewalk stalls encroach as far as they can onto the road, bringing the crowd into physical contact as we squeeze past each other in the narrow street.
