Fateful Footsteps

Intro

Reflecting some years ago on dramatic political developments in countries I had visited from the 1970s on, I noticed that political or social upheaval had often followed in my travel footsteps. So I made some jottings, tucked them away in a file, which has now re-surfaced.

As a young undergraduate at UNSW I was constantly daydreaming about heading off to exotic and foreign territories. As temporary relief for itchy feet my first adventure at age 19 was during the 1970 uni summer holidays. Then after somehow managing to finish my degree and avoiding national service, in 1973 I set off for a big wander through S.E. Asia, and other subsequent travels into the 1990s.

I seek your indulgence as the story is a longer read than usual (and includes links to previous snippets) – a blend of potted political history, geography & personal memoir, vaguely inspired by the current fad for genre-mixing. 

An old-fashioned atlas may assist with the geography, in the spirit of my fold-out map on that first big trip: Bartholomew’s South East Asia.

Part 1

In December 1970 I hitchhiked from Sydney to Darwin and flew to Portuguese Timor, which doesn’t even exist any more, and so supports my dodgy thesis. 

In Baucau my first night in a foreign country was spent sleeping with other travellers on the verandah of the local school. A bus-truck trip along a very potholed road with a river fording to the capital Dili was a good introduction to later rough travelling in Indonesia. Patrolling Portuguese soldiers were a reminder of the colonial administration.

From Dili I flew to Bali via Sumbawa in an old DC3 crammed full of locals with their caged chickens. Landing at our stopover on wet grass the overloaded aircraft slid all the way to the end of the runway and stopped about fifty metres from an impenetrable wall of jungle. The laconic Canadian pilot agreed it was close.

Travelling by bus to Jogjakarta, and after visiting Borobodur temple, I hitched a ride back to Denpasar and flight home. My appetite was whetted for a return to Bali three years later.

History in Timor then went quickly. The end of hundreds of years of neglectful Portuguese colonial rule was a move in the right direction. But then Indonesia took over with Australia’s disgraceful connivance, and ruled Timor for thirty years until forced by independence fighters and international pressure to leave too. 

The literally poor, long-suffering Timorese people finally got their independence as Timor Leste. 

After meritoriously leading international peacekeeping forces in the years before independence, Australia then disgraced itself again by playing hard-ball over sharing gas & oil deposits under the Timor (oh yeah!) Sea. 

Part 2

In January 1973, after a pending court case for national service conscientious objection was set aside (thanks to Gough), I headed off again. My canvas tote bag (no backpack for me) was lightly loaded with a spare shirt and toothbrush, and I splashed out on indestructible hand-made car tyre & leather sandals. And the essential SE Asia map as my only navigation tool. 

No camera though, as I considered that looking through a lens fundamentally changed my perceptions, mediated my experiences, and created a distance with the locals. Needless to say, these were prehistoric pre-internet days, and mobile phones only existed in the imagination of science fiction writers.

I flew to Bali again and stayed in a ‘losmen’ with Wayan and his family just off the main dirt road going down to Kuta Beach. Omelettes with magic mushrooms were on the menu for westerners at local restaurants, and dollar-a-day budget very affordable. 

As part of the pioneer ‘hippie’ influx, I have to share the blame for the later explosion in popularity of that ‘island paradise’ as a tourist destination. Definitely in my footsteps. 

At least I didn’t have the idea of writing a precursor to Lonely Planet, like Tony and Maureen Wheeler did that year. But they became seriously wealthy from sales of their ubiquitous guide-books, and I had to eventually work as a salaryman. 

From Surabaya in Java I travelled by inter-island ship to Makassar in the Celebes (now Sulawesi) and north by bus to mythical Toradja-land. When the road further north ended, a fellow traveller and I set off into the jungle of central Sulawesi with local guides for three days through the jungle to Lake Tentena, and then north by bus to Poso on the coast. 

Thirty years later Muslims in that area decided to hack into the sizeable Christian community and a long period of communal violence and slaughter followed. 

From Palu on the west side of Sulawesi the romantic idea of taking a traditional prahu sailing boat to Borneo (now Kalimantan) proved unfeasible, so we flew there to Balikpapan. The massive rainforest clearing of this huge island was still to come, and did indeed follow in my footsteps, due to the rapacious demand for land for palm oil plantations, and of course timber. 

The downside of all that unexploited rainforest was that there were no roads going north. So my mate and I flew north to Tawau in Sabah (East Malaysia) and then travelled by bus to the capital Kota Kinabalu. I then continued alone by small boats westwards to Brunei, the oil-rich sultanate, and on into Sarawak (the other half of East Malaysia) and eventually to the capital Kuching. 

The subsequent palm oil industry raping and pillaging of Sarawak’s forests quickly spread south to Kalimantan and has continued ever since.

My most memorable experience in Sarawak was heading upriver into fabled headhunter country and spending a couple of nights in a longhouse on stilts, with old skulls decorating the ceilings.

On the cargo ship to Singapore my long hair locks were cut back to respectable length to avoid trouble with Singaporean immigration, as long hair for males was strictly forbidden by government decree. I kid you not.

Singapore was still in its post-colonial phase and heading towards modernisation. Travelling north into Malaysia, my route took me up the west coast via Malacca, Kuala Lumpur and the Cameron Highlands to Penang, to hang out for a couple of weeks in a beach hut, with simple pleasures.

Then backtracking to KL, I crossed over to the east coast to check out sea turtles nesting season at Kuala Trengannu, where at night they came up on the beach to lay their huge pile of eggs in sand holes that they laboriously dug.

Heading from Malaysia into Thailand by road was too risky because of violent Muslim separatist attacks, which continued at a low level for decades. So, I went by train from Kota Bahru to Songkhla and then on by bus to Bangkok.

Nearby the Patpong Road traveller scene, with its dodgy bars, repression of Thai university students demonstrating against the corrupt military government was getting violent, and so caution required while moving around town. 

Later that year the military leaders capitulated and some left the country. Thailand’s rocky road to democracy had been opened. 

The trail got riskier, as my footsteps were then in sync with big trouble. Heading by bus towards Vientiane, capital of Laos, in the misty early dawn lights I recall seeing the giant tails of US B-52 aircraft lined up at Udorn airbase in north-east Thailand. A warning perhaps which we ignored.

The communist Pathet Lao were still trying to get rid of the old royalist pro-Western government. Unbeknown to me Kissinger was waging war against the communists, by bombing the crap out of the east of Laos (with those B-52s), as the insurgents gathered momentum for their eventual takeover. 

After crossing the Mekong by ferry to Vientiane, and more dodgy bars, we were turned back in a bus heading north by government troops, and then flew to Luang Prabang, the only other royalist stronghold in the country. Both were surrounded by rebel soldiers. Later that year the government fell and the communists took over. 

My memories of Luang Prabang include a local river trip to visit ancient Buddhist caves, and having our boat stopped and inspected by communist flag-waving soldiers. After exiting Laos further up the Mekong by crossing into Thailand and travelling back via Chiang Mai to Bangkok again, I was ready to go west a few weeks later. 

As there were no land crossings allowed into Burma (later Myanmar), where tourist visas had just been extended from forty-eight hours to seven days, I flew to Rangoon (now Yangon). I recall Rangoon’s run-down colonial buildings and men wearing traditional longyis. 

Black market US dollars and Johnny Walker brought in from Thailand financed a week of cheap travelling in Burma. I headed by train north to sleepy Mandalay, and then by local boat south down the Irrawaddy River to Pagan (now Bagan), sleeping on deck. 

The legendary thousand or so temples of Pagan were seriously damaged in an earthquake two years later, and so poorly restored by the ruling military junta that a UNESCO listing was declared in the 1990s. 

Aung San Suu Kyi wasn’t yet on the political horizon and the military dictator Ne Win firmly in charge of The Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma. The long awakening of opposition and her rise from house arrest to defacto presidency were played out for forty years after my visit. 

Next stop was Calcutta (now Kolkata), and my Indian initiation. It would take another whole essay to chart the changes in Indian society since. After stopping for enlightenment at Gaya under the same tree as Buddha, and the holy waters of Varanasi on the Ganges, I took a hair-raising bus ride from the Himalayan foothills up to Kathmandu. 

In 1973 Nepal was a sleepy kingdom, and Kathmandu known on the traveller overland route between London and Sydney as an essential pit-stop, with bountiful hash cafes and chill time. 

And a jump-off point for some low-key Himalayan exploration: from Pokhara in the west I trekked out to Jomsom and back, continuously uphill and downhill, staying in tea houses and living on rice and dall – apparently there’s a road there now!

Nepal became much less sleepy when violent Maoist opposition to the self-serving royal dynasty and government broke out in the mid 1990s and continued through to 2006. The patricide of the King and killing of others in the royal family in 2001 by Prince Dipendra added a distinctively medieval or classical note to that literally poor (yes again!) country’s struggle towards modernity. 

In the 1970s overland travellers then continued on untroubled from Kathmandu to London via Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey, all of which became problematic: with the Russian invasion and rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, spilling over into Pakistan; the overthrow of the Shah and rise of the Mullahs in Iran; and U.S. intervention in Afghanistan. Old overlanders must look nostalgically at their time chilling in Kabul hang-outs and famous Pudding Shop in Istanbul. 

However the overland route did not beckon for me, and after nine months on the road already I headed home through Sumatra, which eventually of course copped a huge tsunami. 

Indonesian dictator Suharto was at the height of his powers. A player in the Generals coup against previous dictator Sukarno in 1966, following massacres of hundreds of thousands of supposed communists aka ethnic Chinese (another shameful chapter in Indonesia’s history), it took another 25 years for him to be deposed in turn. 

By late October I was back in Bali, for a flight to Darwin, and then naturally hitchhiked home to Sydney via outback western Queensland. 

The drama that followed my footsteps in Darwin arrived less than two months later in the shape of Cyclone Tracey, which of course flattened the city.

Part 3

After a year or so back in Australia for my post-grad education diploma, and a tentative attempt at high school teaching, in 1975 those troublesome itchy feet took me off again with my girlfriend this time to London by plane.

After completing a course in Teaching English as Foreign Language, I took a twelve month contract in Algeria’s second city Oran, on the Mediterranean. I taught management personnel at a major oil and gas refinery at nearby Arzew. My girlfriend worked as secretary at the local office of a US gas technology company. We shared a flat in town with other teachers and on weekends a villa on the beach at nearby Trouville. La belle vie! 

Algeria is a beautiful country, from its ancient Roman ruins on the Mediterranean coast, up into the high Atlas mountains, south into the mythical dunes of the Sahara Desert and to legendary Tamanrasset on the trans-Saharan route, and far away Tassili mountains near Libya.

We drove around, even hitch-hiked, and roamed far and wide without any fear. French colonials had only left in 1962 after a bloody war of independence, but locals were welcoming and friendly. Though I almost managed to trade my girlfriend for camels over mint tea one day due to poor communication. 

But trouble was brewing to the west of Algeria, as the Moroccan government mobilised its people and army to literally march (‘le marche vert’) over the border to lay claim to newly-abandoned Spanish Sahara. 

Iberian colonial powers were not very adept at letting go of their territories. Local Sahraouis did not get any say about joining with Morocco in this crude annexation, which the UN talked ineffectually about for decades. 

The border with Morocco was closed and as Oran was the closest Algerian city, roads were blocked going westwards out of town. News of events there were censored. 

The Algerian government under Colonel Boumedienne had been formed from their war of liberation, so it strongly supported the right of self-determination for Sahraoui people, and deplored Moroccan expansionism on its border. 

Our life went on as usual, but exploration out west was definitely out of bounds. However as a result of the high alert status of Algerian armed forces we did have a brush with military authority one day while motoring down south with French friends in their 2CV Citroen. 

Coming over a rise in the road we saw our first big Saharan sand dune after travelling across the stony pre-desert country, and stopped to photograph it. Walking across the sand we heard shouting and turned to see soldiers racing towards us with their rifles pointing our way. Behind them was a small military airstrip on the other side of the road, with Russian MIG fighters lined up under camouflage covers, which we hadn’t noticed.  We spent the rest of the day under serious interrogation by the officer in charge before being released to continue our journey. 

As a means of throwing off their coloniser’s culture, the Algerian government had adopted a policy of ‘Arabisation’ to reduce the use of French in schools, and even old bilingual road signs were replaced by Arabic-only. 

The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria eventually led to trouble in the 1990s, when an Islamic political party was denied its right to rule despite gaining a majority in national elections, and this set off a bloody civil war of repression and reprisals, devastating the country for over a decade. 

Part 4

Back in Australia in 1977 I joined the ranks of Qantas cabin crew and visited most stopovers on their world-wide network over the next two years. Those countries survived in tact from my passing through, although Greece almost disappeared as an economy, and Thailand continued its series of coups. 

In 1978 I spent a few weeks on holidays in Sri Lanka, staying on the beach at Hikkaduwa on the west coast, and then travelling in a circuit via Yala nature reserve down south and into the high country to Kandy, the lovely lakeside Buddhist centre. 

The east and north of the country were already not recommended for travel due to local ‘political’ disturbances. A precursor to the savage twenty-five year civil war which was to rack the country, as the Tamil minority responded to increasing domination and persecution by majority Buddhist national governments. Estimates of 100,000 killed are an indication of the scale, and of course desperate refugees started flowing out of the country from the 1990s. 

After transferring to the ground with Qantas and with some years of management experience under my belt, in 1985 I was posted to Tahiti in French Polynesia as area manager for three years, which coincided with a troublesome period of nuclear-testing by the French government at Mururoa atoll. 

Politically very sensitive and due to the agitation of a small but strident independence movement, France had just devised a form of local autonomy to assuage Polynesian aspirations with their own limited government. 

Local politicians then took on all the trappings of pseudo-democracy, with a grandiose and corrupt president, legislative assembly and generous public sector. All paid for by French subsidies for the ongoing nuclear program, which supported the highest standard of living in the South Pacific, and quelled many restive spirits. 

As an expat with a young family and comfortable living conditions, I found it all interesting and rather sophisticated for a far-flung archipelago. Until striking Papeete port dockers got angry and set fire to the town. Our offices avoided damage as they were tucked away in a central courtyard building off the street, but Air New Zealand was burnt, as dockers rampaged out of control in the streets. We sat up in our residence in the hills out of town, preparing evacuation plans if the situation deteriorated further, which it fortunately didn’t. 

My most impressive experience in French Polynesia, apart from learning to scuba dive, was in the aftermath of the Rainbow Warrior incident in Auckland harbour. French secret service agents had inadvertently killed a Greenpeace activist aboard the boat (which had taken part in protest blockades off Mururuoa) with underwater explosives designed to sink it. 

The two undercover French agents were soon captured in their camper van in the NZ countryside, and later convicted to ten years in prison for manslaughter. The French government negotiated their release in exchange for paying $8m damages, and undertaking to keep them in ‘detention’ on the atoll of Hao, near Mururoa. 

The spies were Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart. I had the pleasure of sitting next to Dominique at lunch on Hao, during an inspection of the airstrip facility, which served as an alternate in case of a Qantas emergency at Papeete. Chatting under the watchful eye of her commanding officer across the table, it became apparent that Prieur had been regularly commuting to Paris since her release from NZ prison, which was against the agreed terms of her release. My exclusive report from Hao would’ve been gold in the Auckland Star, but perhaps curtailed my stay in Papeete.

Part 5

In 1995 I was stationed in Paris as Qantas country manager, and we had a couple of tenuous ‘near misses’ with holidays in some exotic places, including Le Galawa Beach Hotel in the Comores in the Indian Ocean. A year after our stay there a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines 767 crash landed in the ocean literally in front of the hotel (from where it was filmed), killing 125 of 175 people on board, including three hijackers.

Late in 1997 I took the family to Egypt for a cruise from Luxor on the upper Nile. It was cheap because a few months earlier terrorists had attacked the major tourist sites of the Valley of the Kings killing 67 people, and tourism had plummeted. 

Islamic fundamentalist terrorism got steadily worse, and other attacks on tourists in Egypt followed, namely at Hurghada on the Red Sea, which I passed through on a later diving trip. 

So by then trouble was preceding my travels and following them too. And my thesis kinda runs out of puff, but hopefully it’s been entertaining enough. Cataloguing and compressing all these troublesome events creates a melodramatic effect, but I wasn’t ever in serious mortal danger. 

At least trouble isn’t following my travels these days, although recently there was a shocking funicular tram crash in Lisbon, which I visited two years ago. Hmm.