I never once went to East Timor during my time in Darwin. That was from 1976 to 1990, which roughly coincided with the departure of the former colonial power Portugal in 1975 and the brutal Indonesian invasion and annexation.

Australia supported the Indonesian takeover of East Timor. Or rather, the government did, the only one in the world to do so. Australians generally were typically indifferent to the fate of our northern neighbours, but that changed somewhat with the murder of six Australians: Five TV journalists were shot and/or stabbed to death at the inland village of Balibo in October 1975, and In December of the same year AAP freelancer Roger East was executed on the wharf at Dili by a single shot to the head.

These outrages went unpunished. At an official level nothing much happened. Inquiries eventually found that the killings were deliberate, although the Indonesians always maintained they were ‘crossfire’ deaths. In any case, from then on for the next quarter of a century the country was essentially closed off to the outside world while the Indonesian regime went about brutally suppressing the independence movement.

There was a brief surge of anti-Indonesian sentiment following the murders. It was probably expressed most strongly in Darwin, which had long had trade and cultural contact with what was then known as Portuguese Timor*. A small group of Timorese supporters risked run-ins with the law by keeping up radio contact with the independence fighters and sending practical support. There was talk of gun-running. The tireless activist Robert Wesley-Smith kept the issue alive in the local media, where there was some sympathy for the cause because local journos had known and been mates with Roger East.

But for the most part it was back to business as usual between Indonesia and Australia, and when the parlous state of affairs in Dili forced the cancellation of the annual Darwin-Dili yacht race, the hedonists of the Darwin Sailing Club simply moved the race destination to the more congenial island of Ambon.

I left Darwin in 1990 and after a violence-marred referendum in 1999 the Indonesians finally gave Timor back to its people and in 2002 Timor Leste became world’s newest country. (It’s now the 4th youngest after South Sudan, Montenegro and Serbia.)

Jose Ramos Horta is the freedom fighter turned politician who has been both President and Prime Minister of Timor Leste. On one of his frequent visits to Australia, in the early 2000s, I interviewed him for ABC Radio. He said his newly independent country needed help from its friends and neighbours to develop and urged us to come and visit ‘our beautiful country’ as tourists. Remembering the regrettable Australian indifference to the sufferings of Timor Leste during the Indonesian occupation, I made a promise to myself that some day I would.

The flame of my passion stayed somewhat dim in ensuing years by my aversion to tropical heat. (It was the climate that drove me out of Darwin.) Then in 2009 I went to see the movie Balibo with a friend and we both got all fired up again about the manifold wrongs meted out to the people of East Timor, not to mention our poor murdered journalists. I remembered Señor Jorta’s invitation and we vowed then and there to go as soon as we could – spend some money, contribute to the economy. Sadly, this time my good intentions foundered on the rock of my friend’s busy work schedule and our plans came to naught.

Fast-forward to August 2025 and I’ve got two more countries to visit to reach the nice round figure of 100. A friend is driving us both to Brisbane for his grandson’s fifth birthday celebrations. From Brisbane I’m within easy reach of nearby island countries at a time when the tropical heat isn’t likely to be too oppressive. What I’m calling My Last Gallivant will take in first Vanuatu, then, at last, East Timor. (You can read about the airport-related longueurs of this trip under Travel Horrors on this website. The short flight from Darwin to Dili was the only uncomplicated, pleasant one of the six I took altogether. I had a window seat in a row to myself in a neat little E-190 jet that was only about one-fifth full. Bliss.)

From here on my account is largely taken from the email blog I wrote and distributed at the time.

Dili airport is picturesque enough but the facilities inside are a bit basic. You get your visa on arrival – $US30 in cash. No problem with that for the well-prepared traveller, and I didn’t waste too much time grieving over the fact that I bought my greenbacks on a day when the $Aussie was especially weak, or so it seemed to me from subsequent casual monitoring of the relative values of the two currencies.

There is an online entry form to be filled out after you get your visa. Airport wifi is dodgy and my phone doesn’t have roaming so it was a bit complicated for me. I had to wait a while, but eventually one of the staff helped me do my form on one of their old computers behind the counter.

I’m staying at the Hotel Plaza at the ‘nice’ end of Dili. A hotel shuttle car picks me up and takes me there.

Dili-dallying

Not a bad subject line if I say so myself. Not that I dilly-dallied, nosirree.  My phone told me I did 15400 steps on my first day in Dili, (August 29) more than I usually do on a busy brisk day in Hobart.  

My worst fears about being back in the tropics haven’t been realised. The ex-RAAF man at Darwin airport yesterday, one his way to visit his doctor daughter working in Timor, said he believed Dili, though 4 degrees closer to the equator than Darwin, (8 vs 12 south) was generally 2 degrees cooler, or felt that way.

After walking round town most of the day, I think he’s right.  My face got up its usual glow and drip of sweat, but the air just seemed lighter and breezier.  Might be something to do with the mountainous topology and lush verdancy of Timor as opposed to the flatness and relative scrubbiness of the natural vegetation around Darwin.

This is Juana (pronounced ‘Joanna’) from the front desk. Within an hour of our first meeting she told me she loved my hair, asked me how old I was, insisted on taking a selfie then demanded a hug.  🥰. I was all sweaty and sticky but how could I refuse?

(I know they’re different cultures, that Timor is not part of Melanesia, but when I was in Vanuatu several blokes also asked how old I was, within minutes of mutual greeting!  And did I have children. I’ve sometimes felt awkward when people from traditional cultures ask that question, as if I’m confessing to some inadequacy by answering ‘no’.  But now I just say ‘nope’ with a big cheery smile.  At least the blokes don’t ask for a hug.  And they invariably go on to tell me I don’t LOOK 73, god bless them. Same here in Timor Leste.)

First night out I walked along the street towards a government building where they were having a flag-raising ceremony.  The staff – a dozen or so – were all lined up along the footpath facing the boss lady and 2 uniformed blokes in the front yard.  They invited me to stay and watch, which I did.  They marched, saluted the flag and sang the national anthem.  I hadn’t brought my phone with me, alas. One fellow let me take a photo on his phone and I created an email to send it to myself, but it didn’t work.  Damn.

I ate that night at The Great Wall, the very good Chinese restaurant in front of my hotel. Crispy duck with garlic bok choy, and free peanuts while you sip on the rather good Portuguese whites.

I ate there on subsequent nights too. I could have gone out into the hot night looking for local cuisine, but what the Chinese do with duck and pork belly is …. irresistible. I did have a lunch at this place (at right) down from the hotel, which had been recommended to me by Juana, but their best offerings were Chinese too. I had an excellent hot soup there. I forgive the Chinese their dreary gimcrack retail architecture because their food is so good.

The Timorese are very patriotic and very much steeped in the memory of the Indonesian occupation of the 70s, 80s and 90s.  There are flags and monuments everywhere.  

The building behind the gates is a former residence of independence leader Manuel Carrascalao. During the independence referendum in 1999 , 150 people sought shelter from the violence here. But a pro-Indonesian militia attacked it, killing 12 people including Carrascalao’s 17-year-old son Manuelo, who was tortured and hacked to death. The house has been turned into an art gallery. 

Wherever there are sites of massacres or gunfights the grounds are kept beautifully, in contrast to the somewhat grotty streetscapes, crumbling footpaths and empty shopfronts that characterise much of the city.  

I spent most of the morning at the Museum of Timorese Resistance.  Major reminder of how brutal the Indos were – they wiped out something like a third of the population in the years after the takeover.  And we turned our backs on them!  (Gough Whitlam a major offender, alas.)  

When I got to the museum it wasn’t quite ready to open, and this kind young man, name of Deveo, took me across the road to an archival museum dedicated to the journalist Max Stahl, who documented the 1991 massacre in which the Indonesian military shot dead 270 unarmed protesters at Santa Cruz cemetery.  I’m going there tomorrow.

They sat me down and showed me a half-hour doco on his life and work on this big screen.  He was an Englishman who became dedicated to the East Timorese cause.  He became a hero to the Timorese. He died in 2021.

I gave them and the Resistance Museum most of the rest of my dwindling reserves of $US (the official currency of TL), but Deveo took me to the nearest bank to replenish supplies.  

This statue of the BVM is in the lobby of the Resistance Museum. They’re big on Mariolatry.  There’s another giant statue of Herself in a park down by the waterfront.  Timor Leste is a very Catholic country.  This is partly due to the Portuguese legacy, and more recently because the Church supported the independence struggle. Indeed, some of the resistance leaders were priests, including Bishop Carlos Belo who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 with Jose Ramos Horta.

These two men had Portuguese ancestry, as do most of East Timor’s leaders and prominent citizens.

Timor was a semi-feudal chieftancy with no written language before the Portuguese came in the 16th century. Though they didn’t do much to develop infrastructure over their four centuries of colonial rule but they did leave behind some grand architecture and a strong genetic and cultural heritage. There doesn’t seem to be any resentment towards the former colonial power now. In fact in 1975 a sizeable cohort of the population wanted the Portuguese to stay on, and these days Portugal opens its doors to Timorese to study and work there. I spoke to quite a few locals (including Deveo) who’d either been there or were planning to go. Unlike in Vanuatu, where the Frenchness is receding and not many people even speak it, despite it being an official language, Portuguese is widely spoken in the former Portuguese colony, along with the native language Tetum.  

30 August

In the morning I went to the Santa Cruz cemetery, where the Indonesian military in 1999 opened fire on a crowd of peaceful unarmed independence demonstrators, killing at least 250 and injuring many more.  That famous footage of people running from the gunfire was taken by Max Stahl, the journalist mentioned above.  He hid from the Indos at this very spot (see pic on the right).

He hid his video cassettes in the ground here, putting an empty one into the camera just as the Indos found him, and trampled and broke his camera.  He was arrested (lucky they didn’t kill him like they did our journos) and later that night he came back to retrieve the cassettes.  They were smuggled out of the country and were made public in Ireland.  That was the turning-point.  The Indos could no longer deny they were killing and brutalising the Timorese, and the world and the United Nations acted.  In the subsequent referendum nearly 80% of the people rejected the idea of integrating with Indonesia, a big change from the early days in the 70s when there were strong pro-Indonesian factions.

If Indonesia hadn’t been so brutal and ruthless, they might have kept Timor Leste within the fold.

It was this man (middle pic) who told the story about the cassettes to these two tourists.  I just happened to come along in time to hear his impassioned account.  He was 19 at the time and voted for independence. He said a lot of the running people tried to hide in this building, which was then a chapel. I didn’t catch the full story, but I gather people were killed in there.

There aren’t many tourists in Dili, which is a bit sad.  There are a few Europeans at my hotel, but I haven’t come across any in my wanderings around the city, apart from the two at the Santa Cruz cemetery and another bloke I asked to direct me to the marketplace toilet to which I had been given the key by a gatekeeper but couldn’t find.  (The sign said there was a charge for using the toilet but he didn’t ask me for money.)  

I learnt later, from taxi drivers and also from Darwin chums (I popped in there on my way back home to Tasmania) that Aussies who go to Timor Leste tend to go to the island of Atauro, which is a bit of an eco-tourism showcase offering pristine beaches, fine snorkelling, diving, fishing & hiking. Fine if you like that kind of thing. Me, I’m into history and politics. Hence I’m a bit of a novelty in Dili and I attract friendly stares wherever I go, along with curiosity about my age, marital status and reproductive achievements, as mentioned.

August 30. Today is the 23rd anniversary of Timor Leste’s independence and having heard sounds of revelry down by the waterfront I wandered down in the cool(-ish) of the evening to take a look. It was magic – a big happy throng of Timorese singing, dancing and waving flags.

Then the man of the hour turned up to make a speech:  Jose Ramos Horta, currently serving his second term as President of the country.  I waved, but sadly he didn’t recognise me in the crowd as the person who had interviewed him in Hobart about 15 years ago 😏. 

There were lots of local media there, and a young couple recording proceedings with what looked like professional equipment, as in fuzzy microphones.  They were the only other Europeans besides me in the whole gathering, which numbered hundreds and hundreds all along the waterfront.  It was quite thrilling and moving.

I didn’t stay till the end of the speech.  Ramos-Horta is a politician after all and heaven knows how long he would have been at it.  Plus he was talking in Portuguese.  An hour later, back at the ranch, I can hear the music and revelry still going.

Not everyone was there for the official proceedings.  The boys with the flash Ute had naturally attracted a cohort of girls, all sitting in the back. Classic.

These kids were playing a game where the boys shinnied up the poles to grab the buckets of fruit, which they then had to bring safely down.  As I arrived one had managed to get a watermelon, came back down and ran off with it, the others tackling him till he dropped it.  Little kids in the crowd picked up the spoils, gorging on the watermelon which had split open.  

I missed his triumphant moment, but I started to film round 2.  The team on the right were looking good but they didn’t make it and I had to stop filming because I can’t upload a whole mini-documentary.

Here are some pix of street life in Dili in all its developing-world (not allowed to say Third World any more) eccentricity.   There’s the stand-up bus, the 25c bus (I took one of those, see below) and of course, motorcycles everywhere. And they still have Mateus Rose! We used to consume it by the gallon in Darwin in the 70s and 80s. Of course one is way too sophisticated to drink it now. Plus you never see it in the bottle shops or pubs.

You’ll recall it is my practice to collect a fridge magnet from every country I visit.  Lately they are pretty much the only souvenir I bring home, since I already possess a surfeit of tea-towels, scarves, cheap jewellery, tablecloths, cards and sundry knick-knacks from foreign parts.

I popped into a number of likely-looking joints but they didn’t even seem to know what I was talking about.  When I came across Chinese retail outlets I thought: for sure they’ll have them, they sell everything. But they hadn’t heard of them either, and mainly sold cheap tech stuff.  Imagine – a country so poor and untouristy the Chinese haven’t even bothered to bring them the economic boon of fridge magnets!

It was beginning to seem that Timor Leste, alone among the nations of the world, does not have fridge magnets. I enquired of taxi-drivers, hotel staff and tourist guides.  No such thing, they said, but you could try the Tais market, full of lots of local crafts and stuff. I took a blue taxi (second cheapest ride after the 25c bus) there. 

I enquired at half a dozen stalls with no luck.  A young fella tried to charge me $2 for a rectangular paper flag in a cellophane packet, but I scoffed at his offer and knocked him down to 50c (which was way too much anyway, but I am getting better at haggling).  I muttered one last ‘fridge magnet?’ as I neared the end of the market stalls and another young fellow took me to the back where he produced from a small pile a fridge-magnet-sized rectangle of woven cloth with the E Timor flag on it.  I looked skeptical but he proved it was magnetized on the back by slamming it up against a metal pole and sure enough, it adhered.  He wanted to charge me $US5, but I knocked him down to $2.50, and in the end he accepted $2.30 because that was all the small coin I had.  

I was overjoyed. I hastened back to the hotel to show my trophy to the staff there who had taken an interest in my quest and advised of its likely failure. I fossicked in my backpack, where I’m sure I’d put it, but could not find it! I emptied the contents onto the reception desk. Nada. Zilch. No doubt Juana and the others thought I was making it up. There’s a last-minute twist to the fridge magnet story – see below.

August 31. This morning, my last day, I went up Cristo Rei…the giant 27m, 80 foot statue of JC.  It was a gift from Indonesia to the Timorese, supported by that arch-militarist Suharto himself, supposedly to mark the 20th anniversary of the Indonesian takeover.  No hard feelings about all the murdering then, eh?  Then the Timorese voted out the Indos but the statue stayed up.  

(However much I bad-mouth the Indos I do admire their official policy of religious tolerance.  They don’t persecute Christans as is happening in parts of North Africa and the Middle East.)

Juana from the front desk had suggested I get up at 5 so I could get up there in time to watch the sunrise from the peak, but I’m fed up with early waking and besides I didn’t want to tackle those 584 (I counted them as I trudged up) steps on an empty stomach and the breakfast room didn’t open till 7.

So I drenched my sun hat in cold water (so it would drip down my neck and back), slapped it on, packed a bottle of chilled water and off I went in the hotel shuttle car at 8am.

East Timor must be the most Catholic country in the world.  Catholic iconography is everywhere.  Note the Stations of the Cross lining the path to the top.  

The view was pretty good although they could trim away a bit of the dead dry vegetation.

The shot of me at the top was taken by a group of young Aussies, not tourists but in the Army.  They were in TL for three weeks on an aid mission, teaching various skills and helping build houses.  Very nice young folks.  

I came back to the hotel in a 25c minibus, (they call it a ‘Micro-let’) due to a mix-up with the hotel shuttle driver.  (He said he was there waiting for me, but I walked up and down that damn parking line for 20 minutes looking for him, and I stick out like a clown among all these dark folks.) 

I only had two $2 coins left so I gave one to the Micro-let driver and told him to keep the change.  Still cheaper than the $10 it would have cost me to go back in the hotel car if the driver had turned up, and it was more fun, with jaunty reggae playing and the driver turning down the music to cross himself whenever we passed a church! (He was probably thanking Our Lady for the windfall of this funny rich white lady who could throw away a whole dollar on a 10-minute 25c taxi ride.)

I gave away my last $1 to the hotel driver, because although his excuse for not spotting me in the car park was dodgy, I didn’t want him to be cross with me when he drove me to the airport 😏. And in the end I felt he deserved it for the very convincing shout of incredulity he emitted when I told him my age.

Dili Airport

I’m recounting my experience departing from Dili airport because you won’t learn anything useful about it online or from the airline. ‘Prepare for your flight from Dili to Darwin’, said the last of the several reminder emails (and texts) Qantas sent in the days leading up to the flight.  So they know where you’re going from and where to, so you’d think they could tell you something other than the usual generic stuff about bag limits and dangerous goods and upgrades and blah blah blah.

I arrive at the airport about midday. There are no signs to indicate – anything at all, really.  There was a big crowd of people outside a low building, and when I saw what looked like a rough queue of people disappearing slowly into a narrow dark doorway I joined it.  This was bag-drop, where they looked at my paper ticket and took my suitcase.  But what now?  I hadn’t checked in yet and had no boarding pass.  There was no passage further on and we prospective travellers ended up back outside the terminal building milling around an open area in front of it.  There were a few crappy chairs, all occupied, but it was at least under cover, out of the sun. 

So, do I just stand here then and wait for something to happen?  

I’d read online that there was a VIP lounge I could pay to go into, and I quizzed a few people about where it might be or where I could get drinks and food. Nobody seemed to know, or even to speak English, but one uniformed bloke opened an elasticized barrier and ushered me out past the covered area, pointing around the side of the building.  There I found a couple of hot and grimy takeaway ‘cafes’ that only took cash, making them useless to me as I had divested myself of what little I had left.  I went back ‘inside’ (ie under cover and behind the elasticized barrier) and asked again: Where is the departure lounge? Where do I check in? Eventually a uniformed fellow managed by means of nods and gestures and repeated use of the word ‘bus’ to indicate that I should stand ‘here’ and wait.  A mini bus turned up shortly after and they squeezed 12 of us into an 11-seater which took us to the departure terminal around the corner about 500m away.  

Security and screening went smoothly, and they spoke English, but it would have been helpful to know about the bus. It would also have been helpful to know that contrary to what you read online there is no VIP lounge and no wifi at Dili airport.

Nor is there EFTPOS.  I hadn’t even bothered to ask Google about this because, you know, this is an AIRPORT so of course there’ll be EFTPOS.  But no EFTPOS, and no ATM.  

I was by now mighty hungry, having made that 584 step ascent to Cristo Rei in the morning. There was food and drink tantalisingly on display (albeit in vending machines) in the departure hall, but they might as well have been on the moon for cashless moi.

I had a few hours to wait, so just as well I’d nicked a roll and some cheese from the hotel brekky room and just as well I kept some of those peanuts from the Chinese restaurant. 

The power went off twice, plunging the departure hall into darkness and causing further angst, but fortunately and somewhat surprisingly, not delaying the flight.

Fridge magnet – a twist and a happyish ending.

First thing I did in the departure hall was wander around in a last-ditch effort to find the elusive fridge magnet. There was a stall with a meagre display of crafty stuff, but no fridge magnets here or anywhere in the airport, according to the listless girl attending it. But she was wrong – there was another display thingy up near the vending machines, and there – lo and behold – were actual proper kitschy fridge magnets, made of metal and plastic as they should be. My joy at seeing this was short-lived however, because it was at this point I ascertained that there being no EFTPOS and no ATM, I could not buy one! Woe and alas!

I still had that little 50c scrap of coloured paper, and on my return home took it to Officeworks who laminated it for me. I stuck a strip of magnetic tape to the back, and voila – home-made fridge magnet! Here it is, adorning my fridge.

 Obrigo for reading, and adeus from Annie.

*The island of Timor historically was divided between two colonial powers: the Dutch had the Western half (now incorporated into Indonesia) and the Portuguese had the eastern side, now Timor Leste.