In January, the trade winds bring daily monsoonal storms to the island of Timor. I visited for five days in January of 2019. The rain was falling on Dili the morning that I left and the air was relatively cool. It didn’t hold the broiling humidity that would fall like a weight later in the afternoon. By then I would be away south of Darwin on the long journey home.
I travelled with Kirsty Robertson the CEO of Mary MacKillop Today and we had just spent the five days reviewing operations of the company in providing education services to some of the neediest children and families in the developing world.
I had heard stories about East Timor my whole life. War stories that too many Australian families can tell. Mum’s brother, Uncle Ted had fought there in WW2 as a young Lieutenant in the 2/4th Commando Squadron.
His unit spent most of 1941 wandering around the great rivers of the Northern Territory, preparing for the Japanese invasion that never came. As those invasion fears faded, the Australian defence chiefs were desperate to be seen to take the fight to the Japanese and so used Ted’s unit to replace the 2/2 Commando Squadron who had been fighting a savage guerrilla war on the mountains and ridges of East Timor since the Japanese occupation had begun in February 1942.
In September 1942, Ted and his fellow commandos replaced the 2/2 troops who were done in after their time in Timor. Weather, tropical diseases and the constant threat had taken a heavy toll. Ted’s unit was transported to East Timor by the destroyer HMAS Voyager which ran into trouble immediately when it ran aground on the south coast beach at Betano, stuck fast and had to be abandoned.
The Australians then made their way into the mountains and that meant up, always up, into what Ted’s fellow Lieutenant Alan Dower called those “dreadful mountains in the clouds’. From those mountains the 2/4th carried on an a successful but increasingly dangerous campaign.
It was especially dangerous for the loyal and generous Timorese people whose support was essential to the Australians’ life, liberty and continuing success. The Japanese unleashed a brutal campaign against the sympathetic supporters and engineered a shocking civil war to destroy support for the Australians. By January 1943 ill health, lack of supplies and the Japanese determination to drive the Australians out of East Timor meant their time was up and leaving the only option.
On the night of January 9, the HMAS Arunta stood off the south coast, again at Betano. Because the increasingly heavy surf caused several small boats to be swamped, those Australians who were lifesavers or strong surf swimmers had to set out for the ship through the breakers on their own. All made it. A day later in Darwin and safe, bearded and looking like the wild me they were, Ted was part of a group photo that was taken. Mum would tell us, years later, that it ran on the front page of the Sydney paper and was the first news that they had that Ted was still alive. Ted survived the war and lived a long and successful life during which he and his comrades never lost sight of the debt they owed to the East Timorese people for their lives
Uncle Ted and his comrades were on my mind when I stood at the Australian commando look out at Darre above Dili in January this year. It had been 75 years since those brave wild men had sat faithfully recording troop and ship movements under the nose of the thousands of Japanese troops sent to destroy them. Off the steeply winding road just short of the towering ridgeline a simple memorial marks the spot. The view over Dili is panoramic and the dangers to the Australian soldiers from Japanese action obvious.
Looking down over Dili Harbour from Darre
Many of the East Timorese generations who remembered that first Japanese occupation have now passed, and most Australians don’t know the story. But the East Timorese remember. The fight for freedom resonates strongly in their history. They know and respect their own history and the story of the Australians who assisted in the defence of their country is alive for them.
I was there in Timor in a fundamentally different role to my Uncle Ted. I was there to inspect the work done by Mary MacKillop Today, the aid and development company of the Sisters of St Joseph, the Order of Australian Sisters originally inspired to teach the poor, remote rural communities of Australia by our first Saint, Mary MacKillop.
Brave Sisters of St Joseph had willingly come to Timor Leste during the worst of the Indonesian occupation and in the very practical Josephite way got stuck into teaching the desperately needy kids of the country in their own language, Tetun.
That was nearly thirty years ago, and the work inspired by Mary MacKillop has continued. Now with over forty local staff Mary MacKillop’s inspiration and legacy can be seen in action. The people of East Timor have responded warmly to Mary MacKillop. They recognize and honour her with more enthusiasm and appreciation than most Australians. There is something about her story that appeals strongly to the people of Timor Leste. They too are practical, hard working and family oriented. Mary MacKillop would have recognized the same qualities as common with those of the people of rural South Australia she helped in the 1880’s. This quintessentially Australian woman would surely have been pleased at the continued emphasis on education of poor rural children in the hills and valleys of Timor Leste.
Few nations have experienced the sheer destructive force of occupation and exploitation as brutally as has Timor Leste After living under colonial exploitation of the Portuguese for over 400 years, came the brutality of the Japanese in 1942 and the civil war they fermented and unleashed. It is estimated over 70,000 East Timorese lost their lives during that time. Barely 30 years later the Indonesian invasion and occupation between 1975 and 2000 saw the deaths of an estimated 25% of the nation’s population. Perhaps as many as 300,000 died as a result of the occupation. As a parting gesture the Indonesian forces and the militia they organized took to the country with a destructive zeal not easily imagined. The destruction of the school system has had a particularly pernicious impact on the fledgling country’s future The malice of the occupiers in burning most of the nation’s schools to the ground was a deliberate and cool headed act of intergenerational destruction.
By intervening at this critical time through the ADF’s deployment and professional show of force, Australia redeemed itself in the eyes of many East Timorese. Despite Australian prevarication and diplomatic cowardice at the time of the Indonesian invasion in 1975 and the more recent bad faith negotiations employed over the gas and oil interests in the Timor Sea, the level of support and thanks for Australia I heard expressed was remarkable. The people of Timor Leste are remarkably forgiving and cooperative, aware of their many supporters in Australia and wishing to continue to develop that mature relationship.
When I was in Timor Leste I kept being reminded of the wars and occupations that had so stunted the growth of this remarkable democracy on our northern boundary. There was plenty of evidence of poverty and waste and poor educational and health outcomes. But for me it was the things we have in common that stays with me.
The most positive and hope filled memory for me was the day prior to my departure I visited the Timorese Resistance Archive and Museum which is close by a campus of the University of Timor Leste. Whilst I was dwelling on the terrible history of the nation under Indonesian rule the school leavers had their sight firmly on the future. It was Admission day and milling about the University and spilling over into all the streets were thousands of young Timorese full of hope for the future. They were there with their boy and girlfriends, dressed in the most up to date fashion and with the ubiquitous motor scooters, chatting, laughing, talking on their phones and skylarking like kids of 18 and 19 do in every nation. Timor Leste has one of the youngest average aged populations in the world. If this was the future of the land, it looked hopeful in a way that Uncle Ted could never have imagined all those years before.
Students on Enrolment Day at Dili University
The other striking thing for me as a former Minister for Education was that despite the huge differences there were many features the schools had in common. It was somehow comforting to note that in many ways children were the same throughout the world, it was resourcing that was the issue and made the real difference. In inner Dili, we witnessed our Mobile Learning Centre with which Mary MacKillop Today visits hundreds of schools across Timor Leste to provide access to the resources in the children’s own language. There we saw children with talented teachers responding with delight to lessons in Tetun. We also saw tiny kindergarten children as proud as punch of their new uniforms and deeply distressed at the separation from their mothers. I realized that separation blues for new kindergarten children is surely found in every culture and school system throughout the world. Again, I found that strangely comforting.
At Railaco Leten school, high in the Monsoon soaked mountains, and along a sharp curving road that traced the ridgeline, we were welcomed by the entire school and then reminded of one of the certain and eternal truths of education. That there is nothing more important to a child’s development at school than a well-trained and supported teacher.
In Timor Leste about 70% of schoolteachers have only a secondary level education and a quarter are unqualified volunteer teachers. Mary MacKillop Today supports and trains these teachers, paying them a stipend so that they will stay in the profession. I met about 25 of these volunteer teachers in the village schoolhouse, which was a tiny cement block building with a corrugated iron roof and windows open to the sky. I found them to be an interested, enthusiastic and talented group eager to learn and improve their skills. In other words, they reminded me of teachers had met in every school across NSW; Keen, professional and desperate to see their children succeed. Mary MacKillop Today is committed to this task of training and supporting teachers, surely one of the most critical tasks in the long development of any country.
I flew back to Sydney on Australia Day thinking of Uncle Ted, the children I had met, the communities I had seen and the giving generous staff of Mary MacKillop Today I had the privilege to lead as Chair of the Board. Timor Leste is closer to our mainland than New Zealand, but few Australians visit and fewer understand the Island’s rich history or great need. The children of Timor Leste deserve the justice of a good education. It will change their lives and their country, and it is surely our responsibility to see it happen. I hope Uncle Ted and his mates are happy with my efforts.
John Watkins
Chairman Mary MacKillop Today
February 17, 2019
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