Denpasar to Darwin with Merpati Nusantara Airlines

 

Image by Ardhana S

Merpati Nusantara Airlines were a regional Indonesian airline that used to fly between Bali, Timor and Darwin. And they were cheap. They ceased trading in 2014.

Back in the 70s it was still perfectly normal to smoke on a plane – albeit it had to be down the back! However, it wasn’t so normal was to smoke a join on a plane. 2001: A Space Odyssey had been released in the late 60;’s and was still on my must see list. I was rapt to discover that I could watch it on my flight from Denpasar to Kupang.

So there I was happily winging my way home watching one of the classic movies of the time  when I feel a tap on my shoulder. The very nice man in the seat behind me wanted to know if I’d like to share a joint. I was quite shocked but not too shocked to say no!  So after that I was even more happily winging my way home while watching A Space Odyssey. The joint was the perfect accompaniment to the soundtrack.

We landed in Kupang without further incident. This was to be a quick stop to pick up any extra passengers for the next leg to Darwin. However, a couple of things happened to delay that next leg. Firstly, the skies opened to release a typical tropical downpour complete with thunder storm. Secondly, some guy had bought a lamp that had a solid silver ball attached and was being grilled about its contents. They suspected drugs of course, but no matter how often he insisted that it was empty the Kupang customs folks were not going to let him take it on the plane until they could break open that silver ball. That proved impossible, but the argy-bargy back and forth went on for ages. We should have been back on the plane by now and being served lunch. Perhaps because we were stoned this fellow traveller and I decided that our lunches were probably on the plane and we calmly walked out of the terminal across the tarmac and on to our plane. And sure enough there was a trolley full of sandwiches and other treats for Kupang to Darwin passengers. We had just retrieved a tray each and were about to tuck into lunch when one of the airline staff caught us in the act and ordered us back to the terminal!

Customs staff were still wrangling with the passenger with the silver ball and the weather had become so bad it was declared unsafe to fly. So we were all to be put up in Kupang for the night. I don’t know where it was we stayed. It didn’t really feel like a hotel but we were pleased to see a dining room that was set for a large group pf people – at least we would befed. As it turned out dinner was nothing more than bread and butter – that’s all a very unprepared Kupang could muster. 

CC image courtesy of Jacques Beaulieu

Before I went to sleep I went for a walk and remember feeling like I had entered another world. It was as quiet as anywhere I'd ever been. I stood on a bushy headland looking at the sea and listened to the sounds of unseen distant voices, birds, sea and wind and felt a great peace.

As we boarded the plane for Darwin next morning I bumped into Lizzie – my brother’s kind of girlfriend at the time. She had just got off the plane from Darwin and was heading to Bali to meet up with him. We flew on that same plane back to Darwin. This time it was my turn to be thoroughly grilled about what I been doing in Bali - drugs, marihuana etc. It was all quite pleasant and I was quite open and honest with the customs guy asking all the questions. I quite enjoyed the interaction in fact. Later that night I was fossicking around in my shoulder bag – which the customs guy had thoroughly searched - and out fell a nice juicy head of cannabis. My heart skipped a beat before I smiled and I realised that I had been very lucky, and that this story could have had a very different ending!

Bali Tales 1973

I had been in Bali, or more precisely, Kuta, for just a few hours. I was approached by a French guy wanting to know if I wanted to buy some dope. My instinctive reaction was to say no. He said he was leaving Bali that night and had more dope than he could use and would give me a very fair price. I still said no!

But there was plenty of dope to be found and I think we spent a lot of time stoned there. I honestly don’t remember. But there is photographic evidence of something lifting the mood and providing bloodshot eyes in photos like this:

And this:

The blond woman in this photo was from Melbourne. Her name was Alison and we decided to enjoy a magic mushroom omelette together for breakfast. I have very few memories of what happened after that. I seem to remember lying on the beach with her and on a whim I decided to go off for a wander elsewhere – somewhere off the beach and into the jungle. I have no other memory of that day until she came to my losmen later that night. She was as red as a beetroot and really angry with me. She had fallen asleep on the beach and got very badly burnt. She said I had just left there on the beach. That was true but in that addled state I doubt whether I was able to join the dots and think that maybe I should stay with her or wake her up, or make sure she didn’t get burnt or something. Anyway – not very chivalrous on my part. I blame the mushrooms.

The Western looking guy on the bed behind me in the first photo above was an Australian guy called Michael. He was ostensibly in jail for possession of marijuana, but as you can see he was out and about and enjoying himself. He said he could basically do whatever he wanted as long as he let the police at the local station know where he was, and returned there each night to sleep. A nice cosy arrangement!

Years later back in Australia I was browsing through old photo albums with my friend, Narelle, and she was really surprised to see a photo of her friend Michael in my photo album. Turns out she’d known him in Sydney years earlier!

It was de rigeur at the time to hire a motorbike and go riding around the island. For me, and for many young travellers I suspect, it was the first time I had ridden a motorbike. You did have to show an international driving license and pay the hire fee but after that you were free to hoon off around the island. So we did.

My brother Damien and I. It was a mixed experience. Obviously ripping down the road in a foreign land with the wind flowing back your hair and all that was exhilarating. But not even that thrill of youthful freedom could hide the embarrassment as you passed through villages and ruined their rural silence. No matter how slow you went you were this noisy interruption to their peaceful existence.

The high/lowlight of this day out on the motorbikes was on the way home. No doubt feeling a lot more confident by now I was doing a fair speed on a long flat piece of road between villages then boom – a large unseen by me pothole jolted me back to earth. Almost literally. I wiggled and waggled across the road for some way trying to keep the bike upright and just managed to stay on the bike and on the road. Damien had been riding some way ahead of me and was waiting in the next village and getting worried. He had seen the pothole and I should have been there by now….  He was as relieved as I was to see I was still in one piece and we continued back to Kuta without further incident.

During my time in Bali I became friendly with a German guy called Peter. He taught something or rather at a university in Berlin and was a very jolly guy and I guess we smoked several joints together. One time we were sitting in a restaurant when a few other German travellers came in. He briefly chatted with them and I was amazed just how much his character and tone appeared to change when he spoke German. All of a sudden here was this very serious guy who was speaking quite assertively. When his focus returned to our table and he resumed speaking English the jolly happy-go-lucky Peter instantly returned. It was one of many instances over the years when I saw how the language people spoke influenced who they were.

I always felt sure that Peter and I would meet again one day but alas it wasn’t to be. It was many years later that I found myself in Berlin looking for him with nothing with his name to go by. My friends in Berlin said his surname was a strange one – Wucherpfennig. In English it loosely translates as ‘miser’. Nor was it a common surname but hours of searching phonebooks and lists of names of academics in Berlin universities yielded nothing.  

My chosen route home from Bali was via Timor and Darwin, and that turned into quite a tale of its own.... (to be continued)

 

En Route to Bali 1973 - Singapore/Jakarta

 

In 1973 Singapore didn’t allow people with long hair to enter. So my brother Damien and I were ceremoniously sheared among friends in Perth before our departure on an A.U.S. flight. AUS stood for Australian Union of Students and everyone on board was a student enjoying cheap student fares so you can imagine the party like atmosphere .

I passed the haircut inspection after having to turn a full 360 degrees twice to allow the customs officer to closely inspect my hair, but lingered to see how one of the more senior passengers (he was probably all of 30) with very long hair would get through. He had tucked all his hair up under a hat. He was asked to remove his hat and at that point he immediately started demanding in a very loud voice that he would like to speak to someone from the Australian embassy. He just kept repeating this over and over and eventually he was allowed to enter Singapore with no haircut!

This was my first visit to Asia. I was 19. Singapore had not yet gone through its economic boom time and the streets between Changi airport and the city were lined with poverty. People dressed in rags living by the side of the road; rickety market stalls lined the route, noisy dirty traffic flew past without any apparent order. It’s that assault on the senses that many Asian nations offer first time visitors that nothing can prepare you for. I remember staring open mouthed at the chaos unfolding by the side of the road as we made our way to the hotel.

That aside, the party atmosphere continued on at the student hotel most of us were booked in to. We roamed between various rooms where the alcohol and marijuana was flowing. One of the rooms belonged to the senior hippy guy who had bluffed his way through customs and who was now sitting on his bed naked and cross-legged rolling joints like an Indian holy man. There was a sudden moment of panic when we get a call to one of the rooms that the authorities were coming up to investigate. People scattered back to their own rooms and all the marijuana was quickly flushed down toilets, and windows opened to allow the smoke out.  Smoking and possession of marijuana in Singapore in those days was even more serious than having long hair! It turned out to be a prank - one of the students had just decided to freak everyone out with the fake phone call. It worked. It killed the mood completely.

Damien and I were planning to head to Bali in Indonesia. This involved flying to Jakarta to catch the train through Java and then a ferry to Bali. The flight to Jakarta was not a student flight. I was seated next to a seasoned traveller who had been to Jakarta many times and wasn’t impressed that his work had brought him back there. He called it a hell hole and said that if I thought Singapore was bad I hadn’t seen anything yet. How right he was. There are moments in your travelling life that you never forget. My first steps outside Jakarta airport was one such moment. It was absolute mayhem. A mass of people and traffic and noise in a chaos impossible to comprehend. As we stood trying to work out how to get a bemo (taxi) I noticed a man lying in the gutter – barely clothed and quite still. He could easily have been dead. And the traffic flooded past just inches from his head. No one appeared to notice. Or care. The opening lyrics to a Neil Young song played in my head: “old man lying by the side of the road…. don’t let it bring you down…. it’s only castles burning….”

By the time we reached our accommodation for the night all the women in the bemo were crying at what we’d seen. They guys I guess were crying on the inside. I know I was. Jakarta was extreme culture shock. I think we spent a couple of days there. It’s all a bit of a blur. It taught me so much in such a short time. I have never felt the desire to return.

Our next adventure was the train across Java en route to the island paradise of Bali.