Indonesia from the ground up

---

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 for the benefit of our global community. Some of the students I worked with; Josephine, Della, Pia and Dimas, intend to head into the diplomatic corps, work with international humanitarian agencies and international peace keeping organisations.

This morning we are a very weary group of travellers after an eight hour train journey from Bandung to Yogyakarta. The journey was through magnificent lush tropical country side filled with rice paddies with a backdrop of volcanic mountains.

We arrived at 2.00 am in the morning all feeling very tired as many didn't sleep at all. Fortunately, I slept most of the way!

Some free time this morning - before we head off to a range of activities at lunch time.

---