stindotour12

A very privileged day yesterday - spent at the oldest university in Bandu - established in 1955, ten years after the gaining of independence by Indonesia from the Dutch. We worked in the Faculty of International Relations - headed up by a professor who gained her doctorate at Monash University in Melbourne, assisted by an Australian professor Colin Brown from Griffith University in Brisbane. We worked with teams of Indonesian undergraduate students inquiring into contemporary issues associated with Australian-Indonesian relations. In my group these included fanatacism, boat people, East Timor, economic contexts and Papua. It was a day of rich learning and opportunities. The young people we worked with were exceptionally passionate about working with us and very generous in sharing thier knowledge and understandings of how our countries, indeed all countries need to work together ... read more

Busy, exhausting days and poor access to WIFI have meant a couple of days missed from the blog. Wednesday we spent much of the day at the Centre for International Forestry Research - an international research base for scientists from around the world investigating the impact of forestry practices, climate change and impacts on the sustainability of our world. It was wonderful to be out of the pollution haze of Jakarta. Jakarta is such a huge sprawling city full of the usual Asian contradicitions; poverty of the most extreme kind butted up against the trappings of huge wealth. After the research centre it was a five hour bus trip to Bandu a beautiful city in the highlands of Java - the local Javanese use this as a weekend retreat. Despite this, it is another teeming throng ... read more

Day 3 -what a huge day! A 5.30 start this morning at the Kartini school - a school set up by two amazing women to provide an education for some of the poorest children in Jakarta. We were overwhelmed by the generous welcome and hospitality provided by the staff, students and parents when we arrived. We walked through some very impoverished areas to reach the school; passing through slums and even small patches of land wedged between what seemed to be makeshift shanty type homes. The tiny patches of land were used for crops - with the farmers working this land by hand only. The watering of the crops was done from two large watering cans slung across shoulders with the water released as the farmer walked the length of the field. Families living in the ... read more

Not long now until I head off on the most wonderful learning opportunity; a two week study tour of Indonesia. This is part of the Australian Consortium for In Country Indonesian Study's work out of Murdoch University.... read more