The Friends of Suai began with a meeting in the Pt Melbourne Town Hall in December 1999.
Local government friendship groups to assist in the recovery of East Timor were requested by the East Timor leadership who had a strong history of solidarity with people in Melbourne. Pt Phillip has several 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, when the friendship was formed in 1999. The friendship was formed on solid historical ground.
The meeting was hosted by Pt Phillip Council Staff and a local Timorese representative for the CNRT, Abel Guterres the guest speaker Abel introduced Suai as the appropriate town for Pt Phillip to befriend.
Abel described Suai as a lowland area, in the South near the border with West Timor, and, 200 k’s from Dili. It is isolated and it was devastated by the post-ballot conflict, especially the Suai Church Massacre. 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.
A special guest I recognised immediate, was local resident and long time activist for East Timor Shirley Shackleton. Another group who were present, and who are still very active that have helped Suai youth tremendously are Rotary.
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. My favourite 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. While I was interviewing the representative of Green Left Weekly who was standing there I didn’t notice the Indonesian spy until I was reviewing my footage later. When you think of showing this footage in Suai it gets pretty interesting because th Gay Pride parade, which is the most flamboyant of all, arrived grinding and thrusting to great percussion sounds in golden glitter and feathers, while I was filming people handing over their old bikes and bags of rice. Mayor Dick Gross spoke at one of the tents in his stubbies.
The Official Launch of the Friends of Suai took place in O’Donnell Gardens, next door to Luna Park, in March 2000. The Timorese community turned up to cook and showed their traditional culture through their weavings, pottery, dance and music. 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.
The Dili Allstars led by Paul Stewart provided the music for the day and an Irish woman from the UN called Mags was over from Suai to encourage us all. Not many people turned up because it was a bit of a drizzly day but the truck nominated by the Council to go to Suai was on display for the first time, and the Friends of Suai staff in Suai are still using that truck eight years later. It was a big day in the lives of the few who were there as we celebrated Independence and hope for the future of the newly independent East Timor. Looking back in the video the beginnings of the story that are there then are still present in it now.
More about this later .. videos..photos …