Timor Leste
In 1975, after a brief but bloody civil war amongst pro-independence groups and using the false pretext of thwarting a communist take-over, the Indonesian army invaded the small colony of Portuguese Timor. So began a 24-year systematic attempt to destroy the Timorese nation through a reign of terror, including state-sponsored torture, murder, rape and forced disappearances. The world, at best, turned a blind eye. At worst it supported the Suharto government’s genocidal campaign with fighter jets, small arms supplies and napalm.
Parts of Indonesia were in ferment. Aceh province was seething. West Papua was, and still is, violently intent on an independence of its own, so to allow a tiny nation on its own doorstep to rebel against a colonial power and be seen to succeed was far too dangerous a precedent to accept. Portugal, having undergone a revolution of its own a year before, didn’t want to know. Both the USA, still reeling from the disaster of the Vietnam war and Australia, intent on securing oil deals with its powerful neighbour, eagerly sucked-up the anti-communist line and agreed not to stand in the way. The rest of the world fell into line. The result was appeasement in the face of the day to day barbarism, including, on the part of the Australian government at least, the murder of its own citizens.
I’d long been intrigued by East Timor, or Timor Leste (less-tay) to use its Portuguese name, since I’d read Timothy Mo’s harrowing account of the invasion and its aftermath in his quasi-fictional work The Redundancy of Courage as part of my degree course in the early 90’s. The names of people and places were changed, but it’s clearly a critique of the events that were still ongoing when the novel was written. I was hoping that by coming here I’d get a real understanding of what happened on the ground. It was also a handy place to do an Indonesian ‘visa run’, so turning up was always going to happen….
Dili
Dili
Outside Da Terra Hostel, Dili
Dili
Dili Cathedral (post memorial)
Turning up was exactly what it felt like. Our hostel in the capital Dili did not have our reservation. The young teenage girls who apparently ran the place took about an hour to work out whether we could stay or not. They eventually found the booking but by that time we’d already accidentally pulled the handle off the shared bathroom door and the particularly large and boisterous hostel puppy had already stolen one of Helen’s sandals and partially devoured it. It didn’t seem like we were in for a smooth or easy ride here.
Outside Da Terra Hostel, Dili
Digs secured, we were straight out to the Resistance Museum and Archives as it was our only opportunity to see it. Here was a fascinating, if disjointed, account of the recent history of one of the world’s newest nations (independence was finally signed off in 2002) from the lonely struggle through the late 70’s and 80’s, to the visit of Pope John Paul II, to the nobel peace prize awarded to the current president Jose Ramos-Horta, to the collapse of the cold war and the financial crisis that finally destroyed the Suharto regime in Indonesia and opened the door to real independence. Even then murder and revenge prevailed and the country sank into further chaos as massacre after massacre accompanied the withdrawal of Indonesian troops in 1999. An Australian led peace keeping force (INTERFET) was needed for a further 5 years until a kind of stability eventually returned.
Somewhat sobered, we stumbled out into the sunshine and made our way to Dili Cathedral, a lovely sleek & modern church and the chance of some peace for our buzzing brains. Bizarrely though, we wandered into the memorial service of former president Francisco Guterres who had died in June. Known by his nomme de guerre ‘Lu Olo’, the ex-president was a prominent resistance fighter and led guerilla forces in the mountains for many years. His widow was there, shrouded in black and surrounded by burly bodyguards. Not so peaceful after all. Still, an impromptu conversation with an extremely camp local tour guide outside gave us a tip for a restaurant, a place called ‘Dilicious’, which was indeed delicious though our appetite was marred slightly by the sight of a bloodied and dying rat on the pavement outside. It didn’t seem wholly inappropriate somehow. A rather strange day indeed.
On our first full day in Timor we headed out to the docks, bought a cheap ferry ticket and made our way over to the island of Atauro (ata-uro). Disembarking the ‘Nakroma’, a scruffy, unwholesome vessel whose staff attempted to con us into paying for our luggage, we tramped through burning hot sunshine to Barry’s Place, a little resort on the beach-front run by a most welcoming Australian. Barry’s Place turned out to be one of the best places we’ve stayed on the whole trip. A few basic wood and thatch bungalows, shared bathrooms with bucket showers and composting loos. A real ‘eco’ resort for sure. Here we spent just 48 hours, but it felt like a lifetime. Idling on hammocks, taking local boats out to the marvellous reef for snorkeling and lazing on the white sands of the nearby Akrema beach with our new Spanish friend Pelu. It was about as relaxing as it gets, with beautiful weather and was absolutely marvellous.
Ferry port, Atauro Island
Akrema Beach, Atauro Island
Akrema Beach, Atauro Island
Akrema Beach, Atauro Island
Barry’s Place, Atauro Island
Timor Leste from Atauro Island
Back on the mainland we hired a driver to take us on a 4 hour journey to the small town of Balibo, near the Indonesian border. Here we stayed at the Balibo Fort Hotel, a tiny place of just 6 rooms constructed in the grounds of the 16th Century Portuguese fort and a place that itself has seen considerable turmoil through its lifetime. If Barry’s Place was one of the best basic places we’ve stayed, the fort hotel was probably the best of those rare occasions where we treated ourselves to a top-end joint. There was no-one else staying here, so we felt like we had our own little private villa, with exclusive access to the wonderful infinity pool and the staff all to ourselves. Half our time in Balibo was spent here enjoying the facilities. It was truly lovely.
Ruins of Ai Pelo prison, Lauhata
Balibo Fort Hotel
Balibo Fort
Balibo Fort Hotel
Balibo Fort
View from our room, Balibo Fort
Balibo Fort
But the real reason we’d come here was to see the small but perfectly formed Balibo Veterans Museum and the Balibo Flag House Museum. Whereas the former focussed on the town’s involvement in the struggles of World War 2 and the Indonesian occupation, the latter explored the events of October 1975, when a group of journalists working for Australian news channels came to the town to cover the impending invasion. Now known as the ‘Balibo 5’, the journalists sought to protect themselves by painting an Australian flag on the wall of the building in which they were staying. They thought they’d be safe. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Desperate to hide the news of their imminent attack from the wider world, the Indonesian army captured and brutally executed all five of them, burning their bodies and their film footage in a nearly Chinese house. No-one really knows what exactly happened and the matter has been the subject of speculation and national introspection ever since. Another Aussie journalist, Roger East, came to Timor to try and discover what had occured. He was targeted by parachute troops landing in Dili, taken to the same jetty where the ferries now dock, and shot dead. The Australian government did absolutely nothing about it.
Balibo Flag House Museum
The ‘Balibo 5’ – 2 Brits, 2 Aussies and a Kiwi
The fort hotel kindly set up a projector screen in the small dining room and we watched a 2009 feature film of the events in question (‘Balibo’, with Oscar Isaac as a young Jose Ramos-Horta). Some of it was shot in the fort grounds. It was difficult to comprehend that the terrifying chase, capture and murders had all happened literally 100 metres from where we were sitting.
We took a little tour of the town with a local lady called Ella. She showed us the Chinese house, now derelict, where the men were killed and incinerated. Interestingly the place was also used by Aussie INTERFET troops as a whorehouse in the early 2000s. There’s a mickey-mouse like figure etched into the wall outside with the words “Can I kiss” scrawled next to it. She also took us to the Flag House Museum, where a replica painting on an acrylic panel now hangs. The flag house, restored through the work of the Balibo Foundation, is not only a memorial. It also houses a number of other community projects, including a new dental clinic offering free care for all and a women’s group, run by Ella herself, who make bright material sanitary pads for girls who can’t afford disposable ones. We chanced upon another memorial just outside, dedicated to 9 Timorese who were dragged from their homes and killed in 1999 by disaffected pro-Indonesian integration supporters (there were more than you’d imagine) just after the independence referendum was won. Ella was 10 at the time and remembered the gunfire. The memorial was falling apart and no-one seemed keen to do anything about it.
But Balibo town as a whole was lovely. Full of small houses, some traditional wooden constructions still in use, a lively little market and several animist sacred houses with immense thatched roofs. Here, as in so many places, Christianity is supplemented by ancient traditional beliefs & practices and happily sits alongside. People came out to see us as we passed and offered greetings, though here it was always the Portuguese ‘Bom Dia!’’
Balibo backstreets
Former ‘liberation’ monument, Balibo
As with Atauro island, we found it difficult to tear ourselves away from Balibo, but lessened the wrench by taking a bonkers pink local bus back to Dili, squashed inside for 5 hours with smoking locals and talkative bus-boys and many others who befriended us. Classic travel stuff, complete with 4 small goats that rode on the roof.
A final exploration of the occupation back in Dili through the ‘Chega!’ exhibition, housed in a former prison notorious for its brutality and torture chambers. Chega means ‘enough’ and was the nickname for the truth and reconciliation efforts that took place through the early 2000s. We’ve been to several places around the world where similar initiatives have succeeded in restoring a sense of digintiy and hope (most notably in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide). Here too, the Timorese are largely reconciled to events (it helps that a massive proportion of the country were either too young to remember or born afterwards), but it’s a situation we always find hard to completely understand. What’s striking is the sheer level of brutality that occurred here. I asked a lot of people why the Timorese were treated so appallingly and how that could ever be justified. All I got was shoulder shrugs. What else could people say?
We briefly wandered through the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili on the way back to our hotel. This was yet another site of appalling massacre, when 280 peacefully demonstrating students were mown down as they tried to escape a hail of automatic weapon fire coming from the Indonesian army. The event was captured on film by the British journalist Max Stahl who buried his footage in a newly dug grave, retrieved it later and had it broadcast around the world. The world, finally, took notice and the film became the catalyst for greater efforts to get the Indonesians out and grant full independence for Timor. The cemetery has a neat memorial outside, but the inside is a total mess. Scruffy, dilapidated graves everywhere, patches of burnt ground and rubbish blowing about in the wind. Reverence and maintenance seemingly do not go hand in hand here….
Tais market, Dili
Street art, Dili
Rubbish strewn Santa Cruz cemetery, Dili
Despite patches of neglect, the landscape and seascapes of Timor Leste are incredibly beautiful and deserve to be better known. But it’s proved a difficult place to rationalise for me. Tourists like us, I think, are a bit of a curiosity (its still one of the least visited countries in the world), but the people are very warm and welcoming. This is a poor country and everyone seems busy getting on with making a living, though most seem to manage it with a cheerful aspect. You hear vibrant music everywhere. If you ignored the museums, the few memorials and the occasional street art references you’d think nothing awful had ever occurred. Perhaps it’s only my own inappropriate assumptions that are the difficulty. I expected to see a people weighed down by the burden of their recent experience. But they’re not. Most here are young and keen to develop in their young country. They understandably look to the future, not the tortured past.
Our overwhelming experience of Timor Leste however, was fabulous. We mused a lot over its troubled history of course, but that was countered massively by our impression of the country as a true undiscovered and delightfully unpolished gem. It was all the better for being unexpectedly so. We had only 8 days here, but could have easily stayed a couple of weeks. We had some of the best food we’ve had for an age – sumptuous steak, lashings of red wine and some of the best inventive desserts of the entire trip, all courtesy of a trainee hospitality programme that supports girls and young women. There’s also tonnes more to explore in the eastern provinces and the promise of even more luxuriant landscapes at Jaco Island and the surrounding low-key beach areas. It’s on the list as somewhere we’d love to return to. A rare thing indeed.
Footnote: When the Indonesians invaded, they styled their new ‘colony’ as the 27th state and called it Timor Timur, which translates directly as ‘East East’. Timor Leste itself means East East in different languages, Malay and Portuguese respectively. It struck us that if you lived in one of the furthest provinces from the border you could genuinely claim to live in ‘East East East’. The Indonesian side of the island is known as West Timor or ‘West East’. Some people work just over the border, meaning that a daily commute will take you from ‘West East East’ to ‘East West East’ and back again …..
Footnote: Our first Saturday night in Dili was a fabulous example of complete commitment to the art of karaoke. On arrival back at our hostel in the evening, a local place was pumping it out full blast. Nothing unusual in that. My earplugs came loose at about 3:00am. It was still going. I awoke just before 5:00am. It was still going. As we left for Atauro Island at 6:30, it was still going. Total dedication……
Footnote: Barry’s Place, on Atauro Island is seriously under threat. The current Timorese government has commandeered all the land on the island (and in Dili too) to a depth of 50 metres inland from the seafront and, in Dili at least, is currently evicting long standing residents and demolishing their homes to build large hotels through Chinese consortiums. Atauro Island looks like it might also fall victim to large scale Chinese development too. Barry has built up his place over more than 20 years and was planning to gift it to his son. If he loses it, he won’t get any compensation. A young country with a young outlook, but age- old corruption and self-interest seems to emerge regardless….
Simon (16th August 2026)
Such an interesting country, and post. Those beaches look incredible, very sad to read your footnote. I chuckled at the luxury resort, thinking about some of your trekking experiences. You are really living the extremes of travel!