Book tells of Bondan's love of Indonesia

JAKARTA (JP): A biography of an Australian woman known for her strong ties to Indonesia, published by the Australia-Indonesia Institute, was launched this week.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Alatas launched the book, In Love with a Nation, Molly Bondan and Indonesia, at the residence of Australian Ambassador to Indonesia Allan Robert Taylor on Wednesday night. Richard Woolcott, the chairman of the Australia- Indonesia Institute and a former Australian ambassador to Indonesia, was also present.

Molly Warner Bondan (1919-1990) married Mohammad Bondan, a former political prisoner, in Digul, Irian Jaya, in 1946. She worked for the Indonesian government for 18 years, first at the ministry of information and later at the ministry of foreign affairs. Between 1961 and 1965, she was the English speech writer and translator for former president Sukarno.

Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Gareth Evans, in the book's introduction, describes Molly Bondan as a "living symbol of the sympathetic links between Australia, the land of her upbringing, and Indonesia, her adopted country."

The writers, Joan Hardjono, known for her works on the Indonesian rural economy, and Molly Bondan's brother, Charles Warner, wrote the story on the basis of tapes of her radio broadcasts and her many writings.

John Legge, a noted scholar on Indonesian history at Monash University, Melbourne, writes in the preface that Bondan was "regarded with suspicion" by officials in the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.

They "did not quite know what to make of this Australian woman who was so fiercely a supporter of Indonesia and its nationalism," though this feeling, Legge writes, "eventually gave way to respect..."

Bondan, he says, was sometimes "uncomfortable with the excesses of Sukarno's "Guided Democracy" of the 1960s, "finding it difficult to explain to her Australian visitors."

Bondan died on Jan. 6, 1990, three days before her 78th birthday.

Woolcott said the Australia-Indonesia Institute, set up in 1989, intended to publish more books to contribute to an "enduring" relationship between the two countries, which he described as "very good." (anr)