Friends of Suai

The Beginnings of the Friends of Suai

The Friends of Suai began in Port Phillip with a meeting in the Port Melbourne Town Hall in December 1999. Since then the people involved have changed and it has taken time to establish a committee in Suai. After nine years the projects have grown in number and quality.

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The Official Launch of the Friends of Suai took place in O’Donnell Gardens, next door to Luna Park, on 19th March 2000. The Timorese community turned up to cook and showed their traditional culture through their food, paintings, weavings, food, pottery, dance and music. Learn more about Timorese traditional culture and art.

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This was my first glimpse of Timorese culture and it was pretty obvious right then that this country was nothing like Indonesia and nothing like the Pacific Island cultures either. A browse through Suai Media Space Culture section provides a rich insight into the living traditional culture of East Timor now. For more of their stories through art.

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The East Timor leadership requested assistance from Port Phillip Council, where residents had a strong history of solidarity with the people of East Timor.

Port Phillip has eleven residents who worked in solidarity with East Timor for over 24 years, and others who had been involved since the Santa Cruz Massacre in 1991. One of these, Jean McLean was active in the Labour Party advocating for Timor’s Independence for many years. Jean was very active in getting the Friends of Suai off the ground in the first year or two. The friendship was formed on solid historical ground.

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The meeting was hosted by Port Phillip Council Staff and a local Timorese representative for the CNRT, Abel Guterres. Abel introduced Suai as the appropriate town for Port Phillip to befriend.

Abel described Suai as a lowland area, in the South near the border with West Timor. Being 200 k’s of mountainous potted roads from Dili it is isolated as well as devastated by the post-ballot conflict. As the largest centre near the Timor Sea, it is likely to be most affected if the oil and gas industry choose Timor for processing.

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This was not the first time Abel had been called upon to represent his community’s interests in Melbourne, as this photograph attests, he had been a busy man for many years working for Timor’s independence using every device possible to attract the media’s attention to their cause – including turning up in traditional costume to dance.

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Council’s next request for community involvement came in the form of a ‘Truckloads for East Timor’ campaign. The community were invited to bring bicycles, garden tools, anything really on the assumption that everyone in Suai had lost everything. A huge variety of things arrived eventually at the Town Hall. People arrived with little 200g bags of rice, cuddly toys, plastic containers, nails and old clothes. Money always looked good. One of the best was a pedal sewing machine in great condition with a little note on it “For the people of East Timor.”

The Truckloads for East Timor campaign continued into the St Kilda Festival. The truck was set up on the Upper Esplanade opposite Luna Park with the Army Recruitment Van next to it. An Indonesian spy was watching sober-faced and sentry-like, the flamboyant grinding and thrusting dancing to great percussion sounds in golden glitter and feathers, from a nearby pillar, while I was filming people handing over their old bikes and bags of rice.