Derek Pugh
​Nine hours drive from Makassar, in the mountainous South Sulawesi is a region known as Tana Toraja, with its capital at Rantepao. It is populated by the Torajans, a proud ethnic group of mainly Christian people with animist leanings, who enjoy a kind of celebrity status in Indonesia because their unique architecture, culture and funerary customs are well known by all and a ‘must see’ on everyone’s bucket list.
Like most travel in Indonesia it is it remarkably easy to get there. I contacted a driver, Pak Rasyid, by phone, and he took me under his wing and looked after me for a week. Flying in to Makassar from Bali, he was waiting with a handy sign at the airport and within minutes we were on the road north and in the highlands at a Rantepao resort by nightfall.
The Torajan culture appears to be alive and well, perhaps in spite of decades of tourism promotion by the government. Torajan houses, called tongkanan, are at the centre of every village and daily life, and they are everywhere in this part of the highlands. These magnificent carved houses stand high on wooden piles with huge sweeping curved arc roofs, apparently reminiscent of the shape of the ships that brought the Torajans to Sulawesi some 25 generations ago. The Torajan colours of red, yellow, and black add exquisite detail to the carved patterns of the walls.
Christianity was brought by Dutch missionaries early last century, but for many the old animism customs continue, particularly in their dealing with the dead and beliefs in reincarnation. Wealth was traditionally measured by the number of buffalos a family owned, though these days it is augmented by remittances from family members who live elsewhere, and income from tourists. The government ensures there are a few sites identified and promoted for tourism purposes, which has the advantage of protecting a thousand other traditional family sites by concentrating the effects of their ceaseless tramping feet. It also allows for the hosts of souvenir shops that gather around each attraction like tax collectors around a Roman temple. In these crowded commercial dens you can buy everything from your very own tautau effigy of the dead, razor sharp swords and bamboo flutes, to Torajan coffee, cloth and sailing ships in bottles.
“Tomorrow,” Pak Rasyid told me, “we will go to see some caves and you can buy a souvenir.”
________________________________________________
“That’s where I’ll be put, up there,” said Remi: young, vital, and clearly not about to die soon. He was pointing to a pile of coffins. They weren’t stacked neatly, but one upon another wherever they fit. They were mostly plain wooden boxes, although occasionally one was delicately carved with Torajan motifs. Lower coffins were ancient rotting shells whose walls had crumbled so badly that bones had tumbled out.
“All my family is there, for hundreds of years.”
“And those bones…?”
“Yes, my ancestors, but long ago. You can see my grandfather up there on the left… the red coffin.”
His grandfather clearly hadn’t been there that long, but like the others his casket had been pushed into the gap so that at least part of it was within the shallow limestone cave. The cave already seemed full.
“What happens when you can’t get any more coffins in?” I asked.
“Simple, we’ll cut the cave larger. The nobles all have graves carved straight into the rock, look up there.”
Remi pointed out square holes which had been carved straight into the limestone cliff, high up on the wall above us. They had padlocked doors to deter grave robbers, but some were so high the lack of bamboo scaffolding needed to reach them must have been protection enough. Outside the rich graves, wooden effigies of the dead, tautau, sat on carved ledges, their bone-white eyes gazing out across the valley.
We entered a cave at the base of the limestone cliff. Bones and rotten caskets lay everywhere. Many of the skulls had been collected and placed along rock ledges. They leered back at me in the gas-lamp light Remy was charging 50,000 rupiah to use.
One broken casket had several skulls lying among a tangle of long bones and ribs.
“Poor people are buried in here. Sometimes they use the same coffin many times. The bodies rot down to make more room.”
Why such elaborate funerals here in Toraja? Why are they so important?
Reincarnation, I was told. When people die they are really only just sick. They sit, mummified, in a corner of the house, sometimes for years, until the family can lay on a lavish funeral. Only then can reincarnation occur.
A thought occurred to me. “These poor people, the ones who share coffins… would it be possible for a person to be buried in the same coffin again and again, each time he was reincarnated?”
Remi laughed. “I am sure it has happened.”
I wondered what it would be like to know so much about what was going to happen after death. Could I find out?
“What if I moved to Toraja – would I be allowed to be buried in one of these caves?”
“No, it is only for Torajans,” said Remi.
“What if I brought a lot of money,” I proffered.
“Give it to me now, and I’ll see what I can do… maybe,” he grinned.
 

 
The next day Pak Rasyid told me of a Torajan funeral across the valley we could see. I hesitated, would a tourist be welcome at such an event?
“Of course,” he said. “Everyone is welcome. The funeral is a huge celebration of life. People save for it their whole lives. It is aluk todolo, the way of the ancestors.”
As we approached, we could see red flags on houses, and hundreds of darkly-clothed people waiting under elaborately carved shade houses. A group of young children, princesses, were gathered by an open-sided shelter. We stopped and chatted. They were dressed in white, with red, yellow, and black beaded headdresses and belts and were waiting for the tautau to arrive. The effigy would be placed on a chair at the back, and her immediate family would sit around her, and eat the food brought to them.
The old lady, Ibu Bertha Duma, had been ‘noble’ and wealthy, so the crowd waited in anticipation of an extravagant show. She had died the previous year and this was the first day of the several days of ceremony and celebration. As a corpse, she had been thought of as ill, or sleeping, and she had been symbolically fed and dressed by the family each day since she had died. Even now, everyone knew her soul was lingering around the village, waiting for the last day of the funeral when her body would be placed in a high cave, carved into the family’s cliff. Only then could her spirit depart for Puya, the Land of Souls, accompanied by the spirits of the buffalos slaughtered at her funeral.
A dozen elderly women in purple silk shirts and intricately patterned sarongs started to rhythmically beat a drum log, and pigs were carried in, tied tightly to poles. A buffalo was led down the path into the village by a group of youths. This was the first of thirty brightly decorated buffalos, worth $2000 each, which would be slaughtered and shared out among the villagers.
The horns and jawbones of the offerings would return to the house and be attached to the growing stack against it. More horns mean higher status.
The drumming started again and music from reed flutes announced the arrival of the tautau. The old lady had been replicated in wood. She sat on a chair which was tied to bamboo poles for the porters. She was resplendent in a bright purple dress with orange beaded necklaces and conical shade hat. A large ring glinted on a wooden finger as a crowd danced it to its place. The princesses busied themselves to welcome it and the kin of the deceased moved into walled family stalls around it, ready for lunch.
Two lines of black-clothed man and women holding a bright red strip of cloth above their heads arrived. The women wore beaded necklaces of the same orange colour as the tautau. A hundred meters or more long, the cloth was tied to the elaborately carved coffin, carried on a bamboo frame by several dozen men. There was no sadness. The coffin was danced down, and thrown about in joy. People laughed and cheered and shouted advice, the drumming was incessant. A hundred helping hands passed the coffin five meters up a ramp to a shaded platform, carved and painted in red, black, and yellow. Prayers were called out across the crowd, unintelligible to me in the Torajan language.
On the ground below, the first buffalo’s jugular was stabbed by a flattened spearhead. Its removal drew out a bright red fountain, but the beast made no sound as it slowly collapsed. It was quickly butchered, and another behind it, in a flurry of small black flies. Small children gaped in awe as the blood flowed.
The crowd shrank back into the shade as food boxes and water cups arrived for lunch. There was a pause as people ate.
We moved back to the tautau and took photographs of the family posing with it. The funeral had started well - despite the festering metal scent of fresh blood and the screaming of pigs, everyone was pleased.
The drumming started again and a line of about 50 men, dressed in identical dark purple shirts with Ibu Bertha’s name on their backs, formed a circle near the tautau. They held hands and began a slow dance, chanting a dirge. On and on they went, sadness fell across the crowd at last. This was, after all, a funeral.
 

Commentary on commentators.
Derek Pugh
 
It seems journalists can be an obedient lot, and writers on the market must be some of the more acquiescent to their editor’s commands. I write this as a layman and occasional penman, who doesn’t even know any journos, nor ever really talked to one, but the evidence points to an editorial rule that prohibits writers from using the same word twice when describing a day’s market action. I imagine writers clutching their thesauruses to their bosom, printouts bursting from their pockets, hurrying to their desks to complete the required 15 cm of column. Which words to use? Perhaps they have lists pinned to the wall, or weekly tick box rosters for word use. I’ve done some collecting:
 
Stock market up? Well, there’s a plethora of jolly little words to be employed for this glorious day. A 1% gain one week to one commentator was a ‘surge’, to another a ‘recovery’ and a third a ‘rally’ on the same day. In this surge/recovery/rally the following words were used to describe the movements of the stocks in one newspaper alone: climbed, rose, up, surged, rebounded, recovered, soaring, showed continued strength, eked out a gain, turned the tide, gained ground, added, posting a gain, gained, support prices, rallied, steadied,
 
Stock market down? Recent years might have seen these words worn out, but there they still glimmer upon the page from the same reporter a few days later. Our erudite wordsmith dusted off words he’d put aside during the surge and he used the following:  fell, fell sharply, sharp drop, eroded demand, shed, lowered, dipped, pressure, hard landing, profit taking, lost, cutting, gains wiped out, weaker, trimmed, gave up ground, in the red, closed in negative territory, plunged, tumbled, and, ‘the game can go on, but it’s not for the faint hearted’. He even wrote “market jitters”, which of course always means down, as does “investor nervousness” and “spooked investors” which he’s used on other occasions.
 
This reporter is not the only one. They’re all at it. Rule Number 1: No word repetition. For examples:
BHP Billiton fell $1.21 while Rio Tinto plunged $3.96. Woodside Petroleum was off 24c, and Santos down 25c, Caltex Australia shed $1.31. NAB declined 73c, ANZ sagged 32c, Westpac dipped 32c, while Commonwealth Bank added 12c. Newmont eased 9c, Newcrest cut $1.22, and Lihir retreated 25c. Only last week it was: ANZ backpedalled (sic) 20 cents to $21.30, Westpac ended down 21 cents at $23.56 and Commonwealth Bank dipped one cent to $52.50.
​
Do I sound like I am complaining? Far from it. To be fair, and this may surprise some readers, economic reports are sometimes necessarily dull and, to humble amateurs such as myself, perusing the language choice of the day adds interest to reading the papers or on line reports. The imagery of ANZ sagging whilst Rio took the plunge is cheery, despite it’s meaning to the suffering share holders. So to the canny journalists and editors who demand this smorgasbord of tautology each day I doff my literary cap to you. Keep it up, high, elevated, gainful, raised, soaring and/or surging….

Now released and on sale. Tambora:Travels to Sumbawa and the Mountain that Changed the World is available as an ebook and paperback though on-line booksellers, bookshops and directly from me.  To see what's happening with it visit https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tambora-Travels-to-Sumbawa-and-the-Mountain-that-Changed-the-World/744191482268577.
Derek 16/1/15

Following is an extract from the book - the guide part you may find useful if you visit this extraordinary mountain. I recommend anyone who want to visit this mountain also visit www.gunungbagging.com/tambora - it has a number of travelers' tales and good information on visiting the region.


16.TRAVEL GUIDE TO TAMBORA  

Extract only

Getting to Tambora is not without its challenges. Visitors usually come with a tour group or hire a car and driver from Bima and drive the three or four hours it takes via Dompu and along the Sanggar Peninsula coast road. Much of the road at the time of writing is in good condition, but there are sections where it is deteriorating and potholes are growing bigger daily. Two sections of dirt road still exist, but work has begun on sealing them. Self-driving cars or motorbikes is easy and the route there is straight forward with few other roads to confuse.

Another way is to hire a boat from Sumbawa Besar and journey across Saleh Bay to Calabai, and from there seek a car or a motorbike to transport you up to Pancasila. The road up the hill is recently new and still in good condition.

In Pancasila there are two places to stay. Pak Saiful’s guesthouse is on the far side of the football field. He has five rooms containing double bunks. In 2014 he was charging 100,000 Rp per night.

The other place is the Tambora Guesthouse, which takes about 15 minutes walking after passing through Pancasila. It is an old coffee plantation homestead and many of its guests are groups on organised tours. They advertise they are willing to pick you up for 40,000 Rp from Pancasila in their vehicle if you ring ahead.

Pak Saiful displays the walk times and distances on the wall of his barugaq and in the guest book. They come from the Kelompok Pencinta Alam Tambora (KPAT, the Nature Lovers Group of Tambora and I found the times suggested were surprisingly accurate, particularly on the way up and I assume the distances are accurate also (they were probably measured using a GPS). The climb to the summit is divided into six stages, and the descent follows the same path.

Total Return 41.8 km

Stage Time Up Time Down Distance
1 Pancasila to Pos I (Post 1) 3 hours 3 hours 7.9 km
2 Pos I – Pos 2 2 hours 1.5 hours 3.5 km
3 Pos 2 – Pos 3 2 hours 1.5 hours 3.1 km
4 Pos 3 – Pos 4 1 hour 45 minutes 1.2 km
5 Pos 4 – Pos 5 1 hour 45 minutes 1.2 km
6 Pos 5 – Puncak (summit) 3 hours 2.5 hours 4 km
“Pos” = Post
Source: Kelompok Pencinta Alam Tambora, Pancasila Total
Return 20.9 km
Distance: 41.8 km

Stage 1: Pancasila to Pos 1

This is a long walk of 7.9 kilometres. It is not particularly strenuous as the climbing is gentle (although it seems never-ending on the return walk).  The track starts by following roads through coffee plantations for forty minutes, plunges into the forest for another ten minutes and then follows an old forestry road, now overgrown with bracken ferns, fishbone ferns and raspberry bushes. In the late dry season it may be possible to be driven this stretch all the way to Pos 1 on a trail bike. In the morning dew and after rain, brushing up against the plants makes walkers very wet. Suggestions are to wear a long sleeved shirt to avoid scratches from the raspberry plants and two pairs of socks as protection against the leeches, which are numerous if the track is wet.

Pos 1 is a barugaq (shelter) in the forest with a piped spring a few meters away providing clean water. A rest here gives you a chance to check for and remove any leeches and have a meal.

Stage 2: Pos I-Pos 2

The track from Pos I to Pos 2 starts climbing in earnest. The path is narrow and overgrown with many roots and fallen timbers and vines. Leeches are everywhere. Some sections of clear hard soil are incredibly slippery so beware. The track rises to Pos 2 with long inclines. There are many logs to climb over or under.

Pos 2 has another tin roofed barugaq. This one is next to a fast flowing stream. There is a flat place to pitch a tent but the clearing is small.

Stage 3: Pos 2-Pos 3

The trail starts to climb more steeply. The forest here has never been logged, but it was completely destroyed by the 1815 eruption. There are steep, slippery sections both up and down through gullies and many fallen logs to climb over or duck under.

Pos 3 is the usual camping site for two-day treks and the clearing for tents is large and open. There is a barugaq here also. The water source is about 200 meters off to the right on a narrow path. You can see the crater rim from here lit up in the afternoon. After six or seven hours walking up it’s a relief to get here. Most two day trekkers rise at midnight and leave at 1 am to climb to the summit to see the sunrise. It is cool here, but not cold.

Stage 4: Pos 3 - Pos 4

Leaving by flashlight you follow the steep path up along narrow ridges. The forest is thick and ferns press in on each side, along with other plants that release sticky seeds on your clothing. Then the track enters a thick area of stinging nettles called pajatan (or jelantik) which are painful, even with a slight brush against the skin.

Pos 4 is a clearing between among very tall, straight trees. It is surrounded by the pajatan nettles. Here at 2.30 am it is cold. There is no barugaq or water source.

Stage 5: Pos 4 - Pos 5

Soon after leaving Pos 4 there is a log bridge about twenty meters long through the nettles to walk along – beware, it is very slippery and to slip off means painful stings, even through clothing.

There are numerous tree ferns beside the path, and numerous flowering plants and bracket fungi that are worth pausing to look at (on the way down when the sun is up).

The track rises steeply and breathing becomes more difficult with increasing altitude so numerous short rest breaks are necessary. At this altitude there are no leeches.

Pos 5 is a clearing among Casuarina trees and grasses.  It is cold here at night but a good place to camp if you have the gear. The guides will suggest you rest here until the right time to make an assault on the summit and arrive at sunrise.

Stage 6: Pos 5 – Puncak (Summit)

The track rises above the tree line steeply. The forest turns into grasslands as the Casuarina trees peter out. Eventually the grasses stop also and are replaced by sparse alpine vegetation like edelweiss. Look out for kijang (deer), who live at this altitude.

The track flattens out and becomes a weathered rock-scape looking like it belongs on another planet. The crater rim is a plateau several hundred meters broad and the summit is to the right, easy to spot and an easy climb. The views of the crater are incredible. It is seven kilometres in diameter, 21 kilometres in circumference and 700 or 800 meters deep. It is still active and clouds of gas blow up in the wind. You can see a green lake on the bottom if the air is clear.

Looking west, Mt Rinjani in Lombok and Mt Agung in Bali rise above the haze. Look down to view Moyo and Satonda Islands. Look east and you may see Sangeang Api, a small volcanic island north of Bima, which erupted at the end of May 2014.

DESCENDING

The way down is long and tiring, if you are going all the way back to Pancasila it means a 12 hour descent. Going down is where good boots are most needed as you need to avoid the continuing pounding on your toes.

The daylight allows you to look at the views and vegetation you passed when it was too dark to see. Listen out for birds: the Casuarina forest has many different types that call to each other regularly and you can see them because the forest is open (in the lower, thicker forest it is very hard to see any birds, but you will hear them). There are wild pigs (look for the damage they do to the ground) in the forest and deer in the higher regions. There are macaque monkeys that live around the Pos 1 and Pos 2 level.

Watch out for a vicious palm, locally called duli, whose fronds work like a climbing vine and its thousands of sharp hooks will dig easily into your clothing and skin.

SAFETY:

Pak Saiful’s “Guest Book” requires you to record a phone number when you register to climb. Make sure it is a number a rescue party can ring to get help for you, rather than a phone that you carry uselessly in your pack. Ask yourself who you would like the authorities to contact if you are in trouble and provide that number.

Carry a credit card or insurance documents – hospitals will want to see these before providing any service (this is good advice for anywhere in Indonesia).

Wear long sleeved clothing against the scratching of the raspberry bushes and ferns.

Stick to the paths – it would be very easy to get lost in the thick forest.

Keep away from the edge of the crater – it gives way regularly. You will hear rocks falling.

If you are alone, two guides are recommended in case something goes wrong.

CONTACTS and COSTS[1]:

Pak Saiful: Phone (+62) (0) 859 3703 0848, or (0) 823 4069 9138. Pak Saiful operates a guesthouse for 100,000 Rp per bed, and can provide meals at 25,000 Rp each. Pak Saiful does not yet have internet access.

Tambora Guesthouse: Phone +62 (0) 613 5337 0951 visittambora@gmail.com, www.visittambora.wordpress.com : 75,000 Rp per bed, 40,000 Rp for meals, and transport from Pancasila 40,000 Rp.

Guides and Porters charge 150,000 - 200,000 Rp per person per day depending on their experience. They will carry the food, water and camping equipment you need. A few have basic English. Pak Saiful may have some tents available for rent. Small shops in Pancasila sell simple foodstuffs like noodles and rice and local fruit and coffee, anything else you need you should bring. Calabai has more shopping opportunities as it is a larger town.

There was no phone access during my visit to Pancasila or Tambora, though Pak Saiful says sometimes there is using the XL network. (I did successfully use my phone by going about three kilometres down the hill towards Calabai).

In 2014 there is no ‘park fee’ or permit system to climb the mountain like there is for Rinjani so there are no hidden costs.

[1] 2014 prices - they are subject to change

Synopsis, this is a travelogue to Sumbawa, Indonesia, to be released on the eve of the bicentenary of the largest eruption in recorded history in 2015 – Mt Tambora with a VEI of 7 was ten times the size of the more famous Krakatau. It erupted on 10th April 1815 and changed the world’s climate for three years (known as the “Year Without Summer”). More than 100,000 Indonesians died from the event or from the disease and famine that followed and the world reeled from its long lasting effects: millions were affected; there was starvation, disease and death; the destruction of the Tambora culture, language and people; massive European emigration; numerous floods and droughts; religious fervour and the creation of a new religion; the invention of the bicycle; the ‘westward ho!” wagon trains in the US; the creation of magnificent art; the birth of science fiction and Frankenstein; widespread riots and political instability; coloured snow and frosts in mid-summer. The author outlines the history of this largely unknown mountain, travels to Sumbawa and watches four year old jockeys racing horses, wades knee deep through jellyfish, meets royalty and surfers and climbs the mountain and discusses the affects of world climate change on a population that is far from ready.

Read chapters 8 and 9 further down this blog . Expected book length: 60,000 words

The title words were the only directions Derek Pugh had to find Wurdeja Homeland Centre in the vast forests of central Arnhem Land, but find it he did and he founded and ran a school there for four years. Pugh’s story describes his love affair with the bush, the characters who live there and its wildlife.  Working with Indigenous Australians in the most remote parts of the country has its share of challenges and successes but life as a visiting teacher in Arnhem Land is tremendously fulfilling.

Derek Pugh, an ex Kakadu ranger, a teacher, naturalist and bushman worked in several homelands schools and joined a lifestyle as old as time.  His memoir is by turns reflective, tragic and hilarious and describes a life in remote Aboriginal Australia which gave him an insight into a traditional culture which has been witnessed by only a few outsiders.

Spending more than 20 years among the people and wildlife of the Top End of the Northern Territory, and accompanied by his ‘rough-tough hunting dog’ named Turkey, Derek Pugh revelled in the lifestyle and freedom of the bush. Told with respect and candour Turn Left at the Devil Tree is Pugh’s ‘slice of history’.

Life there was "frustrating at times, but always a challenge and Derek has recorded his experiences beautifully in this delightful book". Ted Egan AO

·        ISBN-13: 978-0992355807

·        Available at book shops and on line retailers. Distributed by www.dennisjones.com.au

A Classic Australian Story

(2nd edition 2013) with the Sunshine Girls of Maningrida.

Written by Derek Pugh and ten Burarra girls from central Arnhem Land and originally released in 1995, this second edition celebrates two decades of its use in literacy education in remote communities in Australia. It is an excellent text for all Australian schools to use in Indigenous Education programs and meets a number of key points in the Australian Curriculum.


Fifteen year old Tammy Damulkurra lives in Maningrida - a remote Aboriginal community in Arnhem Land. Tammy has friends and likes the disco and thinks at last she has her first boyfriend but he cheats on her and Tammy gets into a fight with her arch enemy, Sharon. Tammy's parents send her to the outstations for several weeks to cool off and she quickly gets used to the bush and fishing and hunting with relatives. When she returns to Maningrida her love life is a mess and it's not until she leaves again for school that she realizes that it's all going to be okay.


“a story that will strike chords with many teenagers,” with a “naive quality and adolescent voice (which) makes it instantly accessible” B Richardson

Chapter 9.
Bima And The Anti–Sultan
In Bima the kraton is no longer the sultan’s home, although he still uses it for ceremonial or festive occasions. Most of the time the kraton is kept as a museum, which is usually open to the public. Unfortunately, when we arrived the doors were closed because the sultan had died only a few weeks before, and the kraton was still under the official forty–day period of mourning. However, the open gate had been welcoming, and no one took any notice of our arrival as we rode through them. Several young couples sat together in the shade of some giant trees, giggling like young couples everywhere and large numbers of deer roamed freely around the grounds.
Built in 1927, the kraton is a large two–story house. Huge verandas, supported by thick pillars, wrap its sides. Some faded black and white photos hang in simple frames on their walls, so we wandered up the stairs to look closer.
The photos mostly showed groups of people at ceremonial
occasions of the past or traditional musical instruments.
On an impulse, I tried the front door, and the rattle of
the handle quickly brought an old man from inside.
“Good morning, Bapak. We know you are closed. Do
you think we can come in and have a look? We have come a
long way.” And so, as simply as that, we were invited into the
kraton museum. Its entry hall is large with a steep wooden
staircase leading upstairs on one side and hallways heading
off both left and right to give access to the lower rooms.
These days the downstairs rooms are mostly empty except for
a few dusty display cases showing some old clothing, a few
porcelain pots, two small, plain sedan chairs, a couple of old
rifles, and some chain–mail, but little else. Oddly, there were
two huge vases of beautiful fresh–cut flowers standing on
either side of the staircase, despite the museum being closed.
We were led upstairs. This is where the recent sultans had
lived with their families. Still furnished in a 1930s era decor,
the bedrooms have wardrobes and chests of drawers from
Europe, carved Chinese armchairs, and four–poster beds. The
rooms aren’t large, and water marks on the ceilings and faded
peeling paint belie the fact that this was a royal palace. The last
sultan, who was the seventeenth of his lineage, had moved to a
house a few hundred metres away, and it seems few funds have
been spent on maintenance since then, although the old man
who was our guide did mention some restoration in 1973.
Looking out the windows from the upstairs corridors,
I could see, across an open park (the alung), a flat–roofed
vinyl shade tent with rows of white plastic chairs on the road
in front of a house where the latest sultan had actually lived.
This was where mourners could come and join in the daily
prayers to farewell the old sultan.

The palace was slowly succumbing to neglect. I passed the toilets and bathrooms and entered what would have been a servants’ area. It was without a ceiling, and I was interested to see the roof joists and the wooden skeleton of the building, but the old man called me back immediately because the floor wasn’t safe to walk on. I could imagine his embarrassment if I’d suddenly plunged through the boards into the kitchens below on a day he was supposed to keep the museum locked up.
There was an ancient handwritten Koran open on a chest of drawers in the sultan’s bedroom, and we could picture him standing there reading it. Iben posed in front of it for a photo, pretending to read. In the hall were plastic mannequins wearing old clothes. I stood between two and posed for my own photo, and the old man took a topi off the head of the mannequin beside me and placed it on mine. “Spot the dummy,” I said.
There was very little of any real value in the museum, and with the low security we’d witnessed, we could understand why. According to our guide, the sultan’s family now keeps valuable items under lock and key elsewhere.
Iben had told me weeks earlier that we might have been able to meet the sultan, who had been a keen amateur historian himself, so his death was untimely in terms of our visit. After the old man ushered us outside, we sat on the front veranda to discuss what to do next. A short stocky man proudly growing three or four long black hairs from a mole on his face joined us. Iben knew him and introduced him to us as the “Assistant Sultan,” which I correctly took to mean ‘assistant to the sultan’. He is a pleasant man, then in his mid–fifties, and Iben apparently knew him quite well. They talked for a while, and Iben announced that we would
a
be able to meet with the “anti–sultan” that afternoon. I didn’t
know what an anti–sultan was but figured that maybe he
was a stand-in before the new sultan was proclaimed. The
future Sultan (the eighteenth) was still a student in Jakarta,
so perhaps there’d be a year or two of rule by the ‘anti–
sultan’ whilst he was still studying. Curious, I asked Iben
if this was what was happening, but the Assistant Sultan
distracted him, and I let it slide because the mystery would
clear itself up when we made our visit and I was distracted
myself: the man’s mole hairs waved about as he spoke like
tiny semaphores and when he laughed they whipped back
on themselves like they had a life of their own. Anyway, our
plans changed again when we were told that the anti–sultan
was in prayers with the mourners and not available. He
would, however, be happy to meet with us the next morning.
After we’d finished at the museum, we rode up the hill
named Dana Taraha which overlooks Bima. This is where the
seventeen deceased Sultans are buried. Sultan Abdul Kahir,
the first sultan, who reigned from 1630 until his death in
1640, had a simple hemispherical concrete bunker grave,
which looked so much younger than 374 years; I suspect it
had been rebuilt. Iben entered it briefly to pray.
Metal bars caged the grave of sultan number 4, one
had a wooden shelter with a shingle roof, but the others
were simple constructions marking a patch of earth. The
graves were labeled with laminated, faded paper signs, which
announced the names of their occupants and dates of their
burial. Buried there too was the last sultan, the seventeenth.
He had a blue tarpaulin above him for shade, and the clay
of his grave was already hardening. There were a few flowers
around but no real indication of what the grave will look
like when it is a permanent construction. The Bimanese are

Muslims, of course, and unlike the local Chinese who maintain massive mausoleums to their ancestors, most Muslim graves remain simple affairs. It appeared that even the sultans followed this custom.
From the hill, we headed to the waterfront for coffee. Bima sits beside an enormous, picturesque, sheltered inlet several kilometres across. A small volcano named Mount Orambuha stands on the far side of the bay from Bima and it stops any view from there of Tambora, only 65 kilometres away as the crow flies. Unfortunately there was so much haze that day we could hardly even see Orambuha.
As it was malam minggu—the Saturday ‘date’ night—weekend stallholders were setting up sitting places around the water where people could meet with their friends, drink coffee, and eat noodles. Some of the stalls were fenced metal and concrete constructions with roofs, the size and shape of the pens you see at Australian country fairs built to hold competition livestock. They were stretched right around the bay, and in a strict Muslim city, such as Bima, they may well be major venues for the high points of Friday and Saturday night entertainment.
We enjoyed hot steamy Sumbawan coffee and watched the world pass us by for an hour before heading back to Subhan’s house for the night. On the way, Hughen and I bought some takeaway beer from a local warung, and, having an aversion to warm beer, we also picked up a bag of ice to take with us as Subhan didn’t own a fridge.
The next morning we were getting ready to leave to meet the anti–sultan. Hughen asked Iben if he would need to wear long trousers and boots rather than his sandals. Iben nodded.
“Old ladies, you see. More respect,” he said. I had visions of the royal court—the anti–sultan sitting on his throne,

old ladies in waiting attending to his needs, glancing with
horror at Hughen’s hairy knees.
“Gotta have respect,” I added smugly.
We loaded up the bikes because after our audience with
royalty the plan was to ride the full length of the island
back to Taliwang.
“I wonder how old she is,” mused Hughen.
“Who?” I asked.
“The aunt,” he replied. “She must be quite old if her
father died in 1951.
“Whose aunt?”
“The sultan’s aunt, the woman we’re about to visit.”
“What? Ah I see...” In a flash, it was all suddenly clear.
In the same way Iben had introduced the assistant to the
sultan as the ‘assistant sultan’ he had also described the
sultan’s aunt as the ‘aunty sultan’.
There is no such thing as an ‘anti–sultan,’ and it’s quite
likely always been that way. We started the bikes and set
off for Bima with me feeling a bit of a dill, and Hughen
mumbling something about me having cloth ears. I didn’t
even try to explain my misunderstanding to Iben.
We arrived at the aunt’s house a little after 8.30. It
is a normal, though large, suburban house on a reasonably
busy street. Some of the rooms on its right side
have been turned into a small museum, guarded by the
obligatory old Dutch canon. In the garden and facing
out to the street there was a giant political poster for a
woman running for election. Her photo was over a metre
high–a huge balloon head wrapped in a blue headscarf. In
the corner of the poster an older woman’s photo caught
my attention.
Was this the aunt?

We took off our shoes on the porch, and Iben led us to the open front door. Inside a woman with heavy makeup and a peach–coloured head scarf sat next to an old lady, posing for a photograph, so we waited quietly on the side. The room clearly belonged to an old lady, and I remembered many like it owned by my own great aunts decades ago—full of aging furniture, hundreds of books and photos, doilies, and cut flowers. It had that peculiar homely smell that pervades old people’s houses, of dust, mildew, lavender soap and vegetable soup. Three tennis racquets hung on one wall and there were several trophies. A row of plaques, of the type which are commonly presented at special events in Indonesia, were propped open in their boxes along one bookshelf, and vases of flowers stood among the various souvenirs and knick–knacks she had collected over the years.
Hughen recognised the woman being photographed from the poster outside—this was a candidate for the next election; not a balloon-head after all, but an ambitious determined woman with a heavily painted face. After her photographs were taken, she was ushered away to sit on chairs across the room and forgotten. From her body language, I could tell she was mightily annoyed, but by then we were being entertained by royalty, so I didn’t give her another thought until she huffily said her goodbyes and stalked off a few minutes later.
Iben formally introduced me to Ibu Siti Maryam, daughter of the 16th Sultan of Bima, a putri, or princess. She was tiny, with the age–bent body and slow movements of the elderly. Iben bowed and touched his forehead to her hand, and Subhan, Hughen, and I both followed his lead and did the same. She seemed fragile and there was something about her that immediately made me feel protective—and I wasn’t
the only one as later, when she moved across the room, we
almost fell over each other to be her steadying hand. But
none of us could compete with Subhan. A Bimanese himself,
this old lady was his royalty, and he clearly had great affection
for her—if she needed care while we were there, then he
was just the man for the job. I thought he’d probably fight
me for the honour.
“Nice to meet you,” she said to me in English but,
although I suspected she could speak English fluently, she
used very little after that. She sat on a couch beneath photos
of a younger version of herself visiting Versailles and Paris,
Jerusalem, and London, and she talked briefly about her
travels. She had grown up in the kraton in Bima, and I wondered,
but didn’t ask, if she ever compared the opulence of
Versailles with her own palace upbringing. We had visited her
austere childhood bedroom upstairs in the kraton only yesterday,
and it was a poor comparison even to the bedrooms
many modern day Indonesians have in their big city houses.
Iben explained about my interest and research into
Tambora and told her of my plans to write about it. In fact,
he expanded on my virtues and seemed not at all shy about
his use of hyperbole, while I sat quietly, slightly embarrassed,
and put up with it in case this use of such flowery
and complimentary language was normal protocol—after
all, this was my first brush with royalty.
“...he is very famous in his country. Pak Derek has written
many books, and his writing brings great prestige to the
place he writes about. He is writing now about Sumbawa
and Tambora and...”
The introduction had the right effect, and she was immediately
open to my interviewing. I asked what she knew of
the mountain and its eruption, and it quickly became clear
she had a great deal of knowledge and, in fact, had the original writings of the sultan of the time about the eruption. Would I like to see them?
“Mau!” I said. In English, it just means want. As a single word, it might have appeared a little bad mannered, but in Bahasa Indonesia when said with enthusiasm, it seemed the appropriate response, my version of “yes, please”. The princess rose slowly to weave her way through the numerous chairs of her sitting room. Subhan leapt to her service and helped her negotiate the path through the furniture. He would have gladly piggy backed her if she’d asked. Along the wall was a glass fronted bookcase full of old leather–bound books and one, a very large green book was clearly visible. Iben carefully took it down and carried it over. This man of letters, with several degrees in history and sociology behind him had his hands on a very precious volume indeed, and he was nearly in tears of excitement. It was the Bo Saugaji Kai, an almost holy book for him, written by the sultans through the ages to record special events in their domain. Iben’s hands shook as he placed the book on the table and waited, squirming like a toddler waiting under the tree on Christmas morning, for Ibu Maryam to be seated once again to open it.
When she was ready, she opened the book at random to reveal incredibly neat Arabic script for page after page. A faint smell of age rose from the pages as Iben modestly admitted he could read a little Arabic. He and the princess leafed slowly through the book looking for the right era. It must be an extraordinary feeling for her to read the writings of her grandfathers over hundreds of years. I picked out a few dates in the text—1716, 1845, and other years, but the rest was unintelligible to me. Finally the Tambora page
was found, and Iben struggled to translate it. He could see it mentioned the Tambora kingdom and a ‘bad’ sultan and they were destroyed by the eruption, but without a dictionary,
he could do little more.
“There is, of course, a translation in the museum next
door,” said
Ibu Maryam.
She had been struggling to read the text too but blamed
cataracts. She said she needed to have them operated on but
was scared of the operation. I encouraged her—both my
parents had had the operation in their eighties, and they
could see again seperti sulap, like magic! Hughen’s grandmother
had had a cataract operation at ninety–four, and
the princess seemed emboldened on hearing this.
In the background, one of her staff had been fussing with
some cloth and sarongs. She called her over with them and
talked for a while about their quality. They certainly were
beautiful woven artworks. She surprised me by giving me one.
“Choose one for your wife,” she said.
I was stunned. “Wow, the blue one you are holding,
thank you, terimah khasi banyak.” I had already taken some
really nice photographs of her with the blue cloth while she
was folding it. I knew that that would mean it to be even
more special to The Lovely Rina, who loves woven cloth
but also has an Indonesian’s high regard for their aristocracy.
Then, after we had put the book away, and posed for
photographs with her as no doubt many thousands of people
had done before, Ibu Maryam, once again supported by the
faithful and now smitten Subhan, led us next door to her
museum. It was her private collection, she said, and she
had several display cases of porcelain, pin boards of newspaper
articles and photographs, official framed photographic
portraits of several sultans, chiefly her grandfather, number fifteen and her father, number sixteen, who held such an uncanny family resemblance to each other, I had thought they were photographs of the same man. There was an article about the princess as a three–year–old dated 1930—she was born in June 1927, the same year as my father.
“My father was born a month after you in 1927,” I told her. “You are also a year older than Mickey Mouse.”
She laughed and asked me where I was from and, when I told her Darwin, she recalled a Bima–Darwin connection:
“Ah yes, QANTAS Airlines used to fly here from Darwin.” Her memory was good. In 1938, QANTAS had flying boats routed directly from the Northern Territory of Australia via Bima, which was a refuelling depot.
On a lectern, there was a full sized replica of the Bo Saugaji Kai, and two published books about it, one of them a direct translation into Indonesian. Iben read some of it aloud. Quickly it became apparent that it was written as poetry, in verses. Iben’s voice rang out as if he was a stage performer.
“Beautiful,” Iben said several times when he’d finished. He was enraptured. The verses described how the volcano had erupted because God was angry with the Sultan of Tambora, Raja Abdul Gafur. He was apparently guilty of forcing a pious Muslim haji named Mustafa, a pilgrim who had just returned from Mecca, to eat dog meat before killing him without mercy. This is the stuff of folk tales, but here it was in the Bo! A few years later, in 1830, it was quoted by a poet from Bima in a poem:

Its noise reverberated loudly
Torrents of water mixed with ash descended
Children and mothers screamed and cried
Believing the world had turned to ash.
The cause was said to be the wrath of God Almighty,
At the deed of the King of Tambora,
In murdering a worthy pilgrim, spilling his blood
Rashly and thoughtlessly
(Syair Kerajaan Bima)

The eruption had destroyed both the king and his
kingdom, and his legacy might be a tough one, we may
never know much more about him. Most of the other sultans
of the island recovered from the catastrophe over time and
continued to manage the island under rule from the Dutch,
after they returned and ousted the English. These days only
the sultans of Sumbawa Besar and Bima are still in office.
Ibu Maryam was proud of her museum, but her cataracts
were hiding the dismal nature of it from her. The glass
display cases were so dirty that it was hard to see inside, and
in a house full of otherwise obsequious young staff it made
me angry to think they were too lazy to clean properly and
were getting away with it. They weren’t even watering her
potted plants.
At one point she drew my attention to two cheap plastic
dolls about 20 centimetres tall. They were still in the plastic
box they were bought in, but now it was grimy with dust
and age. Souvenir shops the world over sell similar items, but
these dolls were modelling Sumbawan traditional clothing.
Ibu Maryam gave a royal roll of her eyes and tut–tutted, and
I nodded as if I understood, but it wasn’t until afterwards
that I realised that they were models of her and her husband
at their wedding, decades ago.
About two dozen armchairs were placed in a circle in the
room. Ibu Maryam said she often showed school children
and college groups around her museum and was pleased that
young people showed interest in history. We talked about life in Bima, and she asked me about living in Lombok. She said she hadn’t been there for several years.
“But Ibu,” I said, “we are going there today. Would you like to join us, you can sit behind me on the bike.”
She laughed. “I don’t like the bumps, I would fall off.”
She invited us to return to Bima in September as she would be holding a Kraton Festival. I said I would try to come, and we took our leave, climbed back on the bikes, and rode 450 kilometres westwards to Taliwang, fare–welling Subhan near his home on the way.
Tambora was still lying there to our north, shrouded in its own February weather, unconquered, but inviting us like a siren, to mount its sides and stand aloft in its battlements.
“I’ll be back,” I said to the north, in a fake Austrian accent.  

On February 28th 2014 we launched both these books at Parliament House in Darwin. Thanks to everyone who turned up. 

Thanks particularly to Jacky Phillips, who was a 13 year old Sunshine Girl when we wrote 'Tammy Damulkurra'. She was willing to get up and talk about the writing process and say nice things like - it was the reason the girls wanted to come to school each day.

This is not only a nice thing to say, but demonstrates the power and value of story telling in education.

Launching Turn Left at the Devil Tree, and Tammy Damulkurra

Lombok, 11th January 2013

Derek’s  books, Turn Left at the Devil Tree, and Tammy Damulkurra, are Australian stories. But they are about a part of Australia that is foreign to most Australians.

Australia is a big country. You can fit all of Europe in there – probably two times over. But nearly everyone lives in the cities in the south-east corner where the land is green and fertile. Most of Australia is not like this at all. It is a dry and dusty desert; scrubby land and remote settlements. We fly over it on our way to Lombok. And in the far north of Australia – the Top End – where Derek’s story is set, the country is different again. Here is how he describes it:

 “Arnhem Land covers all the land east of the East Alligator River and north of the Wilton and Roper Rivers. That’s about 80,000 square kilometers of coastal floodplains, near impenetrable sandstone escarpment country known as the ‘Stone Country’, endless forests of stringybark, woollybutt and ironbark trees, mangrove swamps, flood plains and wetlands. It’s an area which is home to a dozen or more Aboriginal tribes, as it has been for millennia.”

I gew up in the south – about as far south as you can go. Tasmania is an island state, a comfortable place with small towns populated by old settler families. A long way away from the troubles of the world. I grew up wondering about the ‘mainland’ as we Tasmanians call the big island to the north. I wondered especially about what we called the ‘outback’ and the Top End, the remote north of Australia. I wondered about the environment and the people who lived there. The bushmen who pioneered the country – and the native Aboriginal people who had been there for ever.

When I was a beginning teacher I thought about going to the Northern Territory. The Government was advertising for teachers to work in remote Aboriginal communities in the Top End of Australia. It seemed like another country, another world. And in many ways it is. But by the time I had finished my teaching degree I was already married and starting a family. My adventure to another country would have to wait.

Derek did what I dreamed of. His book, Turn Left at the Devil Tree, is the story of a young teacher who went to work in remote northern Australia. Derek had some experience of the place before he started teaching. He had worked for a time in the Kakadu National Park. But when he arrived in Maningrida, a big bloke with a silly grin and a little cross-poodle called Turkey yapping at his heels, his new colleagues must have thought ‘What the bloody hell have they sent us this time!’

Derek soon settled in. Turkey become very popular. And within a year or so, Derek became a ‘visiting teacher’, camping out in the remote outstations during the week and returning home on weekends. I’m not sure if this was because he had proved himself to be a competent teacher and an independent person – or because his colleagues couldn’t wait to get rid of him! Either way, he was obviously in his element. When he asked for directions, he was told ‘Turn left at the Devil-Devil Tree’. And in the end he spent twenty years living in remote parts of the Northern Territory. Derek was welcomed into the Aboriginal communities that lived in the outstations and, although he admits to being a failure at learning their languages, before long he was given a ‘skin name’. This meant that wherever he went in the bush, people would know who he was and how to treat him. One of the girls Derek taught was called Sabrina. Sabrina referred to Derek as ‘my Big Son’ as a result of his skin name and their tribal ‘family relationship’.

Now I’m probably a sucker for this kind of thing, but I had tears in my eyes as I read Derek’s story about the class of teenage Aboriginal girls he taught, and how he worked with them to write a novel.

‘Suddenly I was the teacher for a group of 15 opinionated, strong, beautiful young women,’ Derek writes. ‘They were undoubtedly the most highly literate group of girls the community had ever seen. They were the crème de la crème. At least that’s what I told them and their egos blossomed.... Very soon, Sabrina... and a couple of other girls came and saw me.

 “We don’t want to be Eagle Class any more, my Big Son, we want to be The Sunshine Girls,” she said.

The book Derek wrote with The Sunshine Girls was called Tammy Damulkurra. It was first published about twenty years ago. No one had done what Derek and the Sunshine Girls did. Tammy Damulkurra is the first novel written about Aboriginal kids and their world, by Aboriginal kids. It is a great book for teenagers. It has all the right elements: the tensions of growing up, teenage love, betrayal, and ultimately salvation and the chance of a better life. But what makes it special is that it is set in the Aboriginal community of Maningrida. I reckon it’s hard to overstate just how important it is for kids to have stories to read that they can relate to. Their stories. The book was described as a ‘landmark in Australian literature’. It quickly sold out and became a standard in school libraries across the Northern Territory. Now it is being re-released and today we are launching this new edition.

In Turn Left at the Devil Tree, Derek writes about the country, the culture, the art and the music of the people he lived with. He tells stories of secret 20,000 year old rock art galleries and of modern Aboriginal art, pieces of which sell for many thousands of dollars and hang in national and international galleries around the world. (One such piece apparently includes a patch in the corner painted by Derek and his class of primary school kids).

And he tells us the history of European involvement over the last couple of hundred years. I was intereseted to learn that Australians of European descent are called ‘Balanda’ by the Aboriginals. This is the same term used in Indonesia for Westerners. When they don’t call us ‘bule’ (otherwise used to refer to an albino buffalo), they usually call us ‘Belandar’ (or sometimes Londo in Javanese). Terms which come presumably from the Dutch ‘Netherlandar’.

The history of white settlement that Derek tells is not a happy one. It is not a happy story for the settlers (whose attempts to establish ranches, missions and businesses failed one after an another) or for the native people (who were the victims of massacres and mistreatment on a grand scale).

But while Derek’s book paints a wonderful picture of Aboriginal culture and the people he lived with, he doesn’t romanticise the place or the people, or politicize race relations. This is an unforgiving country. The people are poor. It may be ‘a land of plenty’, as he says, and people do live well off the land, eating fresh fish, crabs, wallaby, and magpie geese along with bush apples, plums, fruit bats, mud mussels, mangrove worms, tiger prawns, goannas, and the occasional snake, dugong or crocodile. But, even though they have all this good stuff to eat, the Aboriginal people he worked with are very poor by western standards, and, in many ways, they are caught between two cultures. Caught between a 20,000 year old history and a period of perhaps fifty years in which they are learning to live with the Balanda.

The first bush schools Derek established had no walls (just a tarpaulon on the ground) or, sometimes, a tin roof, a couple of picnic tables and a cupboard to lock away the school supplies. He writes about the challenges of teaching a class while a threesome of wild pigs fornicates in the playground, or while mangy dogs roam through the class at will. There were other distractions too. Sometimes, the assistant teacher forgot to cover her ample breasts after feeding her baby in the classroom, and on one occasion one of the student’s had his baby brother with him at school. This was fine until the baby crapped all over his exercise book in the middle of the lesson. But these stories are told with such humour, and with such a fondness for the people and the place, that they don’t sound belittling or demeaning at all.

Over the last few years Derek and I have had many conversations over many beers about writing. As a result, we have formed The Lombok Writers’ Guild. Initially it was a bit of a joke. But it is becoming something more serious. A few months ago, Derek launched my book, Crazy Little Heaven, here in Lombok. In his speech he reminded us of something the actor David Niven, wrote in the introduction to his autobiography, The Moon is a Balloon. David Niven began by saying that there is little more egotistical than writing a memoir.

Maybe. But I look at it like this. We humans only get a few years to live on this planet. And what is the purpose of this brief life? Different people will tell you different things. But I prefer what a mate of mine once said:

‘The purpose of life is to do a lot of great stuff, so that when you get old you can sit around on porches, and tell stories about all the great stuff you did when you were young.’

Maeve Binchey, in her foreword to Tim Bowden’s book, Spooling Through, asks a related question: ‘Who are the right people to do a memoir?’ she asks. And this is the answer she gives:

‘[The right people to do a memoir are] people who remember everything, see wonder and entertainment everywhere, and who take their work, but never themselves, seriously.’

Based on this assessment, Derek is just the right person to do a memoir. It’s not about being famous, or anyone special. It’s not about being egotistical or big-noting yourself. its about telling stories.

Everyone has a story to tell, and Derek’s book is packed full of great stories. He writes movingly about an ancient japi ceremony he attended, in which boys (the boys he was teaching) were initiated into their tribe, the old way. He tells of the wonderful characters, the friendships he made with both Balanda and Aboriginals, and the great kids, who may have been grubby, snotty, and no doubt confused like all kids, but were often keen students. He tells stories about nights under the stars, about bush tucker, about teaching, hunting, fishing, and journeys in the bush. He tells funny stories. He tells sad stories.

And best of all, Derek writes like he is telling you these stories over a beer at the bar, or sitting by a campfire on a beach, or perhaps talking to a group of kids in a classroom somewhere. Its a great book. A great yarn. A great read. Congratulations, Derek.

And with that I officially launch Derek’s two books: Turn Left at the Devil Tree, and the second edition of Tammy Dalulkurra.

Mark Heyward

January 2014