The Ghost of Timor Ch. 02

1997-99

When Alison left me, I was gutted. To say that I wasn't expecting to be dropped when I called to wish her a merry Christmas would be an understatement. Of all the things that she could have said to me that day, "we are breaking up" was the last thing that I ever expected to hear from her. Only a week earlier, she had handed me a letter, which read:

"I couldn't have imagined a better ending to my year than being with you than if I had written it myself. You are the greatest thing that has ever happened in my life. Now stop reading, put down this letter and fuck me as hard as you ever have!"

Alison's change of heart was so unexpected I felt as though a train had hit me. I sat there holding that phone, amid my family Christmas, seeing my life ending in front of me. I simply couldn't process what I was hearing. And while her explanation of why she was breaking up with me may have made sense to her, it truly broke my heart in every way.

In my mind, every appeal to logic and love should have been enough to convince her that this was simply unnecessary and so very wrong. We loved each other, were so happy, we were together. I was prepared to give up everything to be with her. How could she not see that? What had happened? What had I done that she could become so cold, so fast?

I didn't sleep that night or for many days after. Running through endless arguments in my head, hoping I could convince her to change her mind. But all I kept hearing in response were the words she said again and again that day, "I've made this decision." They would be the last words I heard from Alison for the next 25 years. If she had just called once in that time telling me to come back, I would have dropped everything I was doing, run to the airport, and gone straight to her.

"I'll be there in 24 hours." But the call never came.

To make matters worse, my transfer to Sydney was granted just a few weeks later. That made the loss even more crushing because I would now be within a few miles of Alison. I would now live a fifteen-minute drive from her flat. Not our current three hour trek. We could have spent every night together for the next three years. She could have moved out of her flat and lived with me rent free.

But the suddenness of the breakup caused me to wonder what she hadn't said. I wanted her to be telling me the truth about her career goals and how she didn't want me "waiting for her". But I was terrified that she used that as a smokescreen for some other reason. If I tested the waters and let her know I was close and told her I still loved her, and she rejected me again, then I think that I would have been done. I didn't have drink or drugs to turn to-that was never me-I just had pain.

And thus begun a grim period. I wanted to walk up to Alison's door and surprise her with my news, hoping that we would reunite, but I couldn't be the one to make the first move. Rejection at that point, or worse, seeing her in the company of another man, was my constant nightmare. I didn't want to turn over that rock and find something that would, more or less, kill me.

So I didn't. I moved to Rose Bay in Sydney, just over the hill from Alison's flat, and avoided Randwick for the next two years. I didn't even go to the Sydney Cricket Ground-the scene of our first-date to see my team play, for fear of being accused of stalking if bumped into her.

But I had one lucky break when I moved to Sydney. My army reserve posting wasn't automatically transferred to Brigade HQ in Randwick. That was the closest unit to my residence, and also where Alison paraded. No, for my sins, they sent me back to Bardia Barracks in southern Sydney to earn my captaincy. When it rains, it pours.

I say "sent back" for good reason. Since the first day of my army life, I'd been returning to Bardia with increasing frequency and less excitement for training and misery. In the late 90s, there were many clapped out facilities in the army inventory. But none more so than Ingleburn's Bardia Barracks and Heraklion Lines, that just lay just across Campbelltown road in southern Sydney. People rightly complain about some of the third world faculties at Singleton Infantry Centre and other such places. Glorified camp grounds for reserve units coming from and going to the field. Ingleburn was supposed to be a barracks.

The problem with Ingleburn was that they had built it in the 1940s as the army ramped up its recruitment for the Second World War and nothing had changed since. The entire place was falling apart and barely functional. I suspect that the only reason that the reserve put up with being given the place was it was close to Sydney. As a bonus, no regular army soldier wanted to be seen dead in the place.

I rag on the regulars, not as part of any healthy rivalry, but to point out that fact that they despised the reserve and made no secret of it. And the lower the regs were in rank, the more they hated us.

I am not trying to intimate that the reserve came anywhere near the regulars in terms of professionalism, fitness or discipline. But the history of the Australian Army clearly showed that in times of war, conscripted civilians and the reserve always answered the call. They also paid the ultimate sacrifice and won the day. Which meant that the regular army wasn't that special as, given time, anyone could be a soldier. All the regulars had over us was that soldiering was their only profession. A high school dropout working full time at McDonald's would always be better at flipping burgers than the weekend shift.

But the fundamental problem for me in being sent to Bardia again was that this would be the third year out of the last six that I had had to spend all my time in that dump. I believe the government sold the land a few years ago, and made a pile of money in the over inflated Australian property market. Perhaps that is what they had been holding out for all those long decades. And why they put so little money into maintaining that place over that period? They knew that the whole place was going to be bulldozed into the ground one day.

The one saving grace this time around was now I was an officer, not a cadet. Which meant that, despite my low rank, I was now considered one of them. People had to salute me, say yes sir, and leave me alone. All I had to do was turn up to training and not fall asleep, and the army treated me like an adult. I was so glad not to be an "other rank" anymore.

Captain's training comprised relearning all the things from five years earlier that we'd endured as trainee lieutenants. Mostly administration, military law and endless TEWTs. A TEWT is a Tactical Exercise without Troops. To understand a TEWT, imagine standing on windswept hillside in the worst weather an Australian summer or winter can throw at you. Then having to think about how to defend that hill from some imaginary enemy coming toward you. Or attack the same imaginary enemy on the next hill, then stand up and tell your assessors how you would do it. That was my weekends for most of 1998.

If there was any redeeming feature of that twelve months at Bardia, it was the mess life. As much as I complain about Ingleburn's crumbling facilities--and they were literally crumbling--there was always cheap beer to be had at the end of each day. And I mean, very cheap beer and at the end of every day. No one expected you to drink yourself into oblivion every night--we weren't in the navy--but having a few beers at the end of each day definitely took the edge off. And those that did bonded closer than those that didn't.

So it was with much relief that I finally passed Captain's school at the end of '98 and prayed that they would never send me back to Bardia Barracks again. The last twelve months had taken their toll on me and I was sick of my life, which included everything to do with the army. So, without a second thought, I collected my promotion and my pay and promptly resigned my commission.

I had made captain. No one could take that away from me.

So, from early 1998, I was living in Sydney at the taxpayer's expense. My job in Sydney was to act as the liaison officer between the Australian Defence Force's (ADF) overall headquarters (HQAST) and my office back in Canberra. The job itself consisted mostly of shuffling reports from Canberra to the military planners in Sydney. I also peered over people's shoulders to make sure that they weren't about to start World War 3. Any time an illegal Indonesian fishing boat got accidentally "lost" in Australia's territorial waters, some of the ADF thought it was D-Day.

Australia had an interesting relationship with its northern neighbour. Separated only by the relatively small Timor Sea, both countries may as well have been at opposite ends of the Earth. Geographically, they were completely different. One was an island continent while the other an archipelago of ten thousand islands. Australia was brown and barren, while Indonesia was tropical and lush. Culturally, the same differences applied. They shared no common language, history, customs, traditions, or outlook. Australia looked over Indonesia and saw the rest of the world, while Indonesia looked inward and never to their south. Darwin, Australia's northernmost city, was nearer to Jakarta than to another Australian city. And Darwin's population of ninety thousand faced Indonesia's hundred million. It was only the odd stray fishing boat from the north or drug smuggler from the south that reminded each country of the others' existence.

But there was not much chance of anything else exciting happening between the two nations in 1998. We both seemed happy to go on ignoring each other until the end of time. Australia had also been effectively at peace for almost 25 years. Australians hadn't fired a shot in anger at foreigners they disagreed with since the last boat left South Vietnam in 1975. The admirals and generals of the ADF were once young men and had once fought in that war. But as the century drew to an end, from the hills overlooking Sydney Harbour, both conflict and Indonesia must have seemed very far away.

HQAST itself sat on a very exclusive site high on Potts Point. Potts Point overlooks Sydney Harbour, which is what most people think about when they think of Australia. When they built the HQ one hundred years earlier, it no doubt made sense that it should be as close to the nation's fleet and in its biggest city. If Australia went off to fight in a war, most of the army and navy would leave under the very noses of the generals and admirals based at Potts Point. But by 1998, modern communications made that argument increasingly difficult to justify. The brass at HQAST continued to make every argument they could to stay in such plush surroundings at taxpayer expense so they could keep living in Sydney. But it was only a matter of time before the government found somewhere less picturesque and cheaper and a large, modern, soulless HQ built. Hello Bungendore!

But for now, I was the beneficiary of this historical largess. My job required me to be within one hour of work. Given what Sydney traffic was like, my employer put me up in the very pleasant nearby suburb of Rose Bay. Rose Bay looked out onto Sydney harbour from the south. Just a stone's throw away from the more famous Double Bay--think Rodeo Drive on the water--in the part of the city known as the Eastern Suburbs. As a sometime visitor, I'd never really liked Sydney. It was too busy, too noisy, too concrete-y and had too much traffic. But after living there for a while, I came to appreciate that paradoxically, for such a large city, it could be quite pleasant at a local level. If you could walk to where you needed to go, then a slow stroll along the shoreline, under Sydney's abundant and massive trees, was no bad thing.

Rose Bay was a long walk to work but a fast 10 minutes in a car along New South Head Road that led to the city proper. Few people of my income could live in such a style in Sydney and also have free parking at their place of business. So, on one hand, I could say that I had landed on my feet. But because of all that had proceed my move, my life felt very empty.

I have already said that the regular army (and navy) despised the reserves, so I didn't advertise my double life as a soon to be ex-army captain. I was content to have them all think of me as a simple civilian. That had its advantages, the biggest of which was that the military people would be quite honest with me about their plans. They mistakenly thought that I would be too naïve to understand the implications of what they were sharing with me. In their minds, they were covering themselves because they had told me and could say so under oath. They just didn't know that I understood what they were talking about.

One thing that I've learnt over my journey is that the Liaison Officer in any organisation occupies a special place in the hierarchy. First, you are representing your entire agency. So you are effectively considered your head of that agency by the people you are now working with. You might be a middle management nobody when you go home, but at HQAST I was minor royalty.

Second, the military love to showcase the fact that they weren't all kill-bots from central casting. So, whenever they organised any kind of function, or show and tell for a dignitary visiting, I would get an invitation. Most of my weekly protein and carb intake came from eating posh finger food at these parties and presentations.

In between cocktail parties with visiting big-wigs, they shuffled me back to my windowless office. That was in the middle of a hideous office block on the dockside of Sydney harbour. There, I read through reports and tried not to fall asleep. Not that anyone would have caught me if I did. Locked behind a cyphered steel door that could have survived a nuclear warhead, no one could see me and only I had the combination.

All of this would have amounted to a small anecdote in a forgotten blog if my world hadn't dramatically changed, again, in the middle of 1999.

September 1999

As a child, I never liked to travel. I wasn't opposed to seeing new places and things. But the furthest my family ever got was Queensland's Gold Coast. The same Gold Coast where I met Alison twenty years later.

No, the reason wasn't the distance or the destination. It was that whenever we travelled much further than the state's border; I got carsick. I don't know why I got it and none of my sisters ever did, even though we shared the same genes and 1975 powder brown Holden Premier station wagon. My parents eased the problem, allowing me to sleep in the back of the car. Something that would be illegal and tantamount to child abuse now, but no one had a problem with in the 70's. I loved how I could stretch out in the boot on those long trips, making a nest amongst the suitcases and just fall asleep. I hate modern safety society.

And as an adult, I didn't fare any better. Commercial jets were bad enough, though I'm happy to say that things have improved since then. But put me in a single engine Cessna or, God forbid, a boat and I was doomed. I remember that an old girlfriend once insisted that we go whale watching on the Southeast coast of Australia. We spent two hours chasing our tails in rough seas off Eden with nary a whale in sight. I was on the point of throwing myself in the water to end it all and make the pain go away. We were just about to turn for home and end my misery when another boat radioed the tourist fleet that they had spotted a flipper some miles distant. In order to save their no sighting refund guarantee, the vessel set off in hot pursuit to track down the elusive mammal. I don't know the exact nautical term for the effect waves have on a small boat travelling at top speed is, but I came up with one for the effect it was having on me: Fucked!

So, you can imagine how I felt one September day in 1999 sitting off East Timor's Dili harbour after a ten-hour crossing from Darwin on a military catamaran. The tropical heat did nothing to improve my situation. Nor did the sights and smells of the 500 other landlubbers suffering to various degrees as I was. All crammed into the hold with their diesel fuelled trucks and tanks beside them. By the time we were ready to disembark, I was at my wit's end. And, like anyone who feels that they have suffered unjustly or unduly, I was looking to blame someone else for my predicament. I decided that the guilt lay squarely at the feet of one party. I blamed Portugal.

Portugal set the wheels in motion for my dilemma when they decided that the world wasn't as flat as they had been led to believe. So, they set off to find a way around Africa in the 15th century. They eventually found their way down around the Cape of Good Hope. Then they sailed across the Indian Ocean to the spice islands of the East Indies, dropping off trade posts in strategic locations as they went.

They happily settled down in what eventually became known as East Timor for the next five hundred years. They grew rich off the spice trade, occasionally trading pot shots with locals and the Dutch until 1942.

'42 was a terrible year for most of the world. World War Two had been in full swing for over two years and, far from looking doomed, the Axis were at the height of their power in Europe, the Middle East and the Atlantic. Most of Britain's Army and Navy were hanging on by their fingertips in places like North Africa and the North Atlantic. So it came as a rude shock to everyone when the Imperial Navy of Japan bombed the US fleet at Pearl Harbour just months earlier. They also formally declared war on anyone else they could find who wasn't German.

Japan had chosen its moment well. The Western Allies could not withstand what the Japanese had been planning for years. Within days of Pearl, they had fanned out across the Pacific and Southeast Asia. They picked off the spoils of empire, the jewel of which, as far as they were concerned, were the oil fields of the then Dutch East Indies.

Where they could, the Allies, Britain and the Netherlands mostly, put up a spirited defence, but it was hopeless. One of the few places where the Japanese got a bloody nose was Timor. Australian and Dutch soldiers held on there for the best part of a year. They inflicted heavy causalities on the invaders, all the while being supported by the inhabitants of the Dutch and Portuguese Timors. When the allies eventually retreated to Australia, the civilian population were left defenceless. The Japanese then set about seeking revenge.

The Allies eventually defeated Japan in 1945, and the European colonial powers sought to re-establish their power in the region, but for most of them, it was a lost cause. The Netherlands cut a deal with the inhabitants of the East Indies, which became Indonesia in 1949. Now the islands of the archipelago were entirely free of foreign control. Almost entirely, because Portugal still clung to half an island at the extreme eastern end of the region, East Timor.

Portugal had been untouched directly by the ravages of the Second World War. It was in a much better position to re-establish itself in its colonial possession after. Portugal also had a different policy regarding its colonies than did Great Britain or the Dutch. As far as Portugal was concerned, its colonies were a part of Portugal, not a colonial possession. Going into Timor was the same as going to Lisbon.

Portugal held on to Timor for the next thirty years until a coup in Lisbon brought a new government to power. One of its stated policies was the abandonment of all its colonies. This was just the moment the Timorese nationalists had been waiting for all those years. Effectively, given the green light to form their own nation, they leapt at the opportunity. But independence movements all too often devolve into settling scores and violence. Once the Timorese had thrown off the shackles of the Portuguese, a brief three-week civil war ensued as the various factions vied for power.