Echoes of Indonesia’s past

BY PATRICK BILLINGS

Schapelle Corby, East Timor, the Bali Bombings and the Balibo Five. These are the things that dominate Australia’s perception of Indonesia.

Charlotte Maramis’s life story is not only refreshing. It also redresses the history of mutual distrust, cultural ignorance and conflict that Australia still shares with its northern neighbour.

I meet the tiny author in her equally tiny Eastern Suburbs apartment. It is insulated with her life’s artefacts; a shoebox museum of Indonesian art, culture and history. She sits in a swivel chair and swivels constantly to leap up and grab documents or photos to illustrate her story.

‘I didn’t want anyone to think this girl has invented these stories,’ she says.

Charlotte spent one year shuttling between Canberra and Sydney, trawling through government archives, while researching Echoes: Book One.

‘Everything in my book is backed up by reports I got from the archives.’

For her 80 years, Charlotte is smart as a whip and has a formidable memory – a strong asset considering the author didn’t begin writing until in her 70s.

Her first book, Echoes: Book Two, details her life in Indonesia as the wife of Anton Maramis. He was a freedom fighter and a member of President Sukarno’s Executive Committee. He received a state funeral in his home country when he died from cancer in 1999.

Charlotte met Anton, 10 years her senior, in a Kings Cross hotel. Contrasting most relationships that originate in the Cross, their marriage lasted over half a century. Anton, she says, was her only ever lover.

‘I fell in love with him at first sight,’ she says wistfully. ‘He was very charming.’

Anton was working at the time for a shipping company located at the Dutch Consul General’s office on Macquarie Street. With the Japanese losing their grip on South East Asia near the end of World War Two, Indonesia’s independence movement seized on the power vacuum within the archipelago.

‘In 1942, being politically-minded, Anton knew when the Japanese left Indonesia the Dutch would take over again. He decided to leave the company and fight here for Indonesia’s independence.’

Anton’s activities saw him being locked up in Long Bay, twice, for political agitation, thanks to the persuasive efforts of the Dutch secret police.

‘He was stateless, he called himself Indonesian but there was no such thing as Indonesia, it was the Dutch East Indies. Australian Customs were very nice but they had to arrest him and we understood that.’

Shortly after marrying, Anton travelled to Singapore to purchase arms when he sent a letter for his newlywed to join him. But when she arrived in Singapore she realised marrying a freedom fighter would have its challenges.

‘I was taken into the office and interrogated by the British-born head of Singapore Immigration ‘ Mr Haxworth ‘ who was irate that I had married a native, as he called Anton.’

Mr Haxworth took her passport and put her under house arrest.

‘Every morning I had to report to him, and listen to him rant and rave about my marriage. I thought he was going to have a stroke.’

Mr Haxworth threatened to inform the Dutch of Anton’s whereabouts unless Charlotte returned to Australia. She agreed to the terms and returned home, naively believing that Mr Haxworth would not rat Anton out.

It was eight months before she heard news that Anton had been jailed. Several months before Indonesia gained its independence Anton was released from prison and joined by Charlotte to witness the birth of the Indonesian Republic.

Joy spreads across her face when I ask her about these early years. She dismounts the swivel chair to retrieve photos of the Presidential Palace.

‘I witnessed Indonesia’s first President go into the Palace,’ she recalls. ‘People came up to me with wonder in their eyes because now their children could attend school and not lead the menial life they had to live under the Dutch. For me that was worth all the struggles.’

One struggle was setting up the country’s first English-language paper, The Indonesian Observer.

‘President Sukarno decided to hold the first Afro-Asian conference in the world. But they realised they didn’t have an English newspaper to cover the conference.

‘So I met with an Indonesian journalist and we set up The Indonesian Observer. It was fantastic, we had those big old machines and the people who worked them didn’t have a word of English. So after we wrote our stories we would run down to help on the big galley proofs.’

Sorrow, rather than scorn, succeeds the look of joy on her face when I mention Suharto. Suharto’s communist purges are believed to have killed as many as half a million Indonesians. Charlotte is reluctant to speak about Suharto, but when pressed she says it was dark period in Indonesia’s history.

She is also distressed at aspects of the current relationship between Australia and its majority Muslim neighbour.

‘I think fear of the unknown drives a lot of it. I do a lot of public speaking with my books and try to educate people about Indonesia.’

She says finishing her first book gave her the courage to complete the story of her husband and his struggle for Indonesian Independence – Echoes: Book One. Her most recent book, Life’s Ways, departs from Indonesian politics and recounts people she has met over the years.

‘Khrushchev was dreadfully rude, dreadful little man. I was so disappointed with John Wayne ‘ he was wearing make-up.’

After the interview she asks if I can take her to the Indonesian Consul General’s house. The party, to celebrate the end of Ramadan, is almost as squashed as Charlotte’s apartment. The guests are busy chatting and partaking in a giant feast, but most interrupt their conversations to greet Ibu (mother) Lottie, as she is known.

Charlotte reveals Anton’s dying wish was for her not to forget their children.

‘These are all my children,’ she says pointing to the room, as the two smiling daughters of the Consul General stand, waiting to hug their aunty.