Earth Garden

Linda in forest, Blue Tiers, NE Tasmania

Linda the Swift Parrot

Linda in Tapunggaya, Indonesia where there has been destructive nickel mining

I spent most of February away from home, but I was not on holiday. My daughter Linda died very suddenly in Bali International Medical Centre on 27th January 2012.

She had been working in Kendari (Sulawesi) for The Institution for Coastal and Hinterland Community Development (LePMIL), an Indonesian non-government organisation, as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development under AUSAID. LePMIL staff are only paid if there is funding for a project, so having a fully funded staff member is significant assistance.

Linda’s position was as Forestry Development Officer, to educate communities around Kendari on sustainable use of forest resources. Her arrival was delayed and by the time she started the original project had been completed and the funding was no longer available. She used her own initiative to develop and fund another project.

On her blog, Kendari Dreaming (http://kendari-dreaming.blogspot.com.au/), Linda speaks of her visit to an area in South East Sulawesi devastated by unregulated mining: “We can see the impacts that a (mining) project has had on a small community in Tabunggaya village where the fertile red soil, once community gardens interspersed with forest that supported the people in their traditional way of life, contains nickel. Javanese and Chinese companies have been buying out the traditional owners, dispossessing them of their culture and way of life as well as their land. After nearly 10 years of mining, it is now a disaster region where the companies have no respect for the rights of those who still live there. The local primary school is located at the top of what is now a red dirt hill, with mining extending right up to the building’s foundations. Children have to go to school via the truck depot, past the men on their smoke break, all in a world of red dust. Once a traditional coastal fishing village, the sea is now red with pollution and fish stocks are toxic. The prime means of support for locals is now as low-paid mining labourers, very different from their previous healthy and sustainable way of traditional community life.”

In September LePMIL took Linda to the nearby region of Linomoiyo, where a Chinese company plans to buy local and government land for a limestone mine. Extensive areas are also being taken up for palm oil plantations; this is in spite of the fact that palm fruit must be processed within hours of harvest yet no palm oil processing plant exists on Sulawesi, which Linda concluded was a ruse for mining companies to acquire land without disclosing their intentions.

Both these developments threaten the livelihoods of local fishing families who rely on marsh fish for sustenance and income. Linda’s blog promoted the issues sufficiently to raise nearly $1,000 which funded filming of a documentary by the LePMIL crew. This will be used to educate the community so they will be able to make an informed decision about their future, with a second version for wider distribution. Until the film crew held discussions with them, locals viewed selling their land to the company as a means of improving their subsistence way of life. The film crew took measurements of water flow in the rivers to assess their suitability for such projects as micro-hydro or acquaculture, possible alternative income sources for the Linomoiyo community. Linda applied to AYAD for funds to purchase a computer with software capable of editing the movie. AYAD presented the computer to LePMIL at Linda’s memorial in Kendari in February. Now it is her memorial fund that will pay for computer training and wages so LePMIL staff can complete and promote the project she created.

Linda began studying Indonesian in 1996 in Grade 5 at Bicheno Primary School, Tasmania, continuing the subject at Fahan, Hobart College and University of Tasmania. She first visited Indonesia to study the Indonesian language at the Australian Consortium for In Country Indonesian Studies (ACICIS) in Jakarta, in 2008. In 2008 – 9 she spent 12 months in Jogjakarta and Malang on Java to research her Honours thesis, “Resistance, Questions of Governance and Development in an East Javanese Forest Community”. She had a month’s holiday on Java and nearby islands in August 2010, then arrived in Kendari in April 2011 to take up her position as Forestry Development Officer.

In between her visits to the country she was an active member of Hobart’s Indonesian community, contributing to feasts and festivities. She also enjoyed volunteering with The Wilderness Society in Tasmania, doing research and activism around forest issues. One of her favourite tasks was dressing up as a Swift Parrot to represent our endangered wildlife at public events. She also spent a month in WA, assisting with the Kimberley campaign.

Linda and I share a passion for reducing human impact on our environment and now, a commitment to assisting Indonesians to maintain traditional customs in a sustainable lifestyle. Her belief in the need for sustainable use of our resources, reduced consumerism and waste, care for the environment, plus her love of Indonesian culture, language and people meant she felt she could do no better than find environmental work in Indonesia, her goal since 2007.

Linda worked hard to achieve this goal before a brain tumour took her away from us at the age of only 26. I am grateful to AYAD and AHI Assist insurance for giving us the opportunity to meet her friends and workmates, see and experience Indonesian culture, and appreciate Linda’s work.

Friends, family and workmates spoke at a special tree planting ceremony at Ubud in Bali, at Linda’s funeral in Hobart Tasmania, then at her memorial in Kendari, about her passion, courage, willingness to help her friends, and ability to inspire others. What others found a trial about living in Indonesia she found a challenge, particularly the basic sanitary arrangements. Photos and film from the last 10 months of her life show her happiness with, and commitment to, what she was doing. Personal messages of appreciation came from Kevin Rudd, Australian Foreign Minister, and Primo Alui Joelianto, Ambassador for Republic of Indonesia in Canberra, for being such an excellent advocate for good relations between Australia and Indonesia.

Many comments have also been made about her excellence with the language and speed at acquiring the local accent and idioms. At a conference on the island of Ambon before Christmas Linda did a presentation of LePMIL’s marine projects, wowing the audience by presenting it in the Indonesian language. She talked about the difficulties facing small “bajo” communities which rely entirely on fishing to maintain their isolated villages, still prominent in the Wakatobi Marine Park, and the need to manage fish stocks and reduce environmental impacts on their very basic way of life.

Donations made so far to the Linda McRae Dreaming Fund guarantee completion and promotion of the movie, due by June. This movie may only be the start, with future expansion of the project to be considered. All decisions on use of donations will be based on Linda’s interests and LePMIL’s abilities, with money to be used only for environmental projects in Sulawesi. In this way one of Linda’s dreams may be achieved, by LePMIL becoming a more effective NGO, while realising the dream of friends and family that Linda’s name will not be forgotten in the country she embraced as her second home.

To donate to the Linda McRae Dreaming Fund see Heaven Address http://www.heavenaddress.com.