Regional Role - Indonesian Focus

Great article on my step-father's job in Indonesia. My parents have been working in Jakarta for the past five years. I try to get over there once or twice a year to check up on them, and remind them that they should eventually return home to Aus.


When I arrived in Indonesia, I of course had no idea that I was coming to a country on the verge of great change. There have been several highlights in the sometimes turbulent period I have been in Jakarta. Firstly, in the tense days surrounding the resignation of President Soeharto we passed through tank blockades to get to work at the Regional Office in the Embassy. Secondly, on the day after the President resigned it was very difficult to acquire the few (but highly significant) newspapers that had been printed, and my driver spent all day riding around Jakarta’s unusually near-deserted streets on a borrowed motorbike in search of newspapers. Thirdly, from the time of the East Timor independence protests outside the Embassy, I acquired a representative range of protesters’ banners from the Embassy railings. These banners now form part of the collections in the Australian Archives.