Globe-trotting Dalton finds his home

Text and photo by David Eyerly

JAKARTA (JP): Sitting on an old blanket in Nimbin surrounded by copies of A Traveler's Notes: Indonesia, which consisted of six type-written pages and some basic maps, Bill Dalton probably never imagined that he was taking the first step in a career that would see him become a renowned travel writer and the founder of a publishing company.

The year was 1973 and the small town of Nimbin was the site of an arts and music festival, sort of Australia's version of Woodstock, except a lot more innocent and without the rain and mud, according to Dalton.

After years on the road, the 29-year-old American found himself washed up on the shores of Australia, as it were, with little money in his pockets but lots of stories and tips on the lands he had explored that he was willing to share with fellow travelers.

Which was exactly what he was doing one day in Australia for some travelers heading to Indonesia, when someone advised him to sell his notes. So he packed his rucksack and headed to Nimbin.

Dalton, still as lean and full of energy as a man in his 20s, though with the gray hair of his 57 years, recalls packing up his blanket after a day of business and walking back to his hostel with his pockets filled with coins and, no doubt, a smile on his face.

This was the genesis of Moon Publications, so-named for the series of poems he wrote to the moon one night in Goa, which can be forgiven as a youthful indiscretion of a self-confessed hippie.

In many ways, 1973 marked the end of a long, strange journey that began for Dalton in Copenhagen in 1970. After graduating from the Unversity of Copenhagen with a degree in European philosphy and Scandinavian history, Dalton shopped around the "great-American novel" he had written, but none of the New York publishers were buying.

So, with US$1,000 his grandmother had left him in her will, Dalton hit the road, finally running out of money one-and-a-half years later in Calcutta. He continued his journey by working as he went, eventually making his way to Cambodia, where he taught English before the Khmer Rouge brought their special brand of horror to the country.

He arrived in Indonesia in 1972, entering through Medan and experiencing "the craziness and energy that is special to Indonesia for the first time". He went overland through Sumatra and drifted through Java to Bali.

He recalls Kuta Beach at this time, with three losmen all lit by candlelight and kerosene lamps and one refrigerator in all of Kuta Beach where you could get cold Fantas and Coca-Colas, and you had to walk a kilometer to get those.

"It was just a sleepy fishing village at the time. Men mending fishing nets in the back lanes, sampan pulled up on the beach and little kids running around. It was like a working fishing village, with just backpackers, hippies -- this was in my hippie vagabond days. I spent like six months there because it was so nice. It was undiscovered."

Much has changed over the last some 20 years, for both Dalton and Kuta Beach.

For Dalton, his hippie vagabond days were curtailed, though not completely ended, as Moon Publications grew and became successful.

And as Moon grew, along with Dalton's own Indonesian Handbook, more and more people were taking to the road and visiting previosuly "undiscovered" spots like Kuta Beach.

Thousands upon thousands of travelers must have arrived in Indonesia discreetly clutching Dalton's guidebook, the first and for many years only guide to the country, which was banned for much of the New Order era because of Dalton's forthright commentary on the Soeharto government.

And Dalton admits to "blowing out" places, though he says when he was writing his guide he strove to "spread the travelers out".

Dalton is past his blowing out days now. A father of two daughters from his first wife and remarried to an Indonesian woman, he splits his time between his homes in Chico, California, and Bogor.

Many days he can be found in the Jakarta offices of Island Life magazine, an internationally distributed travel magazine that focuses on Indonesia. The magazine is targeted at the well- off, educated, high-tech, sporty traveler, a far cry from Dalton's vagabond days and his irreverant Indonesian Handbook.

But he is comfortable with this new stage in his life, and admits that he has changed. "I'm not a hippie backpacker anymore. I like my comfort."

Then he mentions that he can't wait to take off again, to get back on the road, at least for a while. Maybe hippie backpackers never really die.