8degreesoflatitude

His fortnightly diet of worms and other non-religious experiences

Facts Please

The sad deaths of Queensland tourists Noelene and Yvana Bischoff shortly after they began a holiday at Padang Bai need to be explained. It’s always better to get the facts in any circumstances, however tragic. And there is very little that is more tragic than a case in which a mother and daughter die in the circumstances the Bischoffs did.

Their bodies were returned to Brisbane at the request of relatives and were transported there by Virgin Australia. The airline deserves praise for its public spiritedness. Queensland coronial investigators performed autopsies. The results of these and any findings as to the cause of death will doubtless be provided to the authorities in Bali.

It is in the interest of Bali and its critically important tourism industry that the facts are clearly established and published. Unfortunately there is a culture here of obscuring the facts when embarrassment – real or imagined, present or merely feared as a possibility – looms as a factor.

It is seen in the way all sorts of things are handled by the authorities. Questions from foreigners are often viewed as attempts to interfere. But such questions have nothing to do with national standing. It is time Bali got truly used to the concept that its circumstances and administration are legitimate matters of interest to many people.

Most of the people with a deep interest in events and rights to be told the facts are Balinese themselves, or other Indonesians. In a democratic society no one should live in a fog of incomplete information.

If the Bischoffs died of food poisoning, we need to know. If they died of some poison naturally found in some ocean fish, we need to know that too. Not because we all want to run around madly pointing fingers at people (we can leave that to the overseas media, which does it so well). We need to know because Bali needs to be run properly in every respect.

The “drugs” police found in the Bischoffs’ room at their Padang Bai resort and tried to make a song and dance about were the sort of medications travellers bring to Bali and other places – to treat stomach upsets and other conditions it is easy to get here. Noelene Bischoff was a highly qualified nurse. We should assume she was being naturally and reasonably cautious.

Sadly whatever killed her and her daughter Yvana was immediately overwhelming.

Farewell to a Good Farmer

Brett Farmer who has been Australian consul-general in Bali since 2011 following Lex Bartlem’s early departure in 2010 to become ambassador in that place of many delights Beirut (no, that’s not a joke) is in turn taking his leave. He departs on Feb. 5. Farmer has been a steady hand at his Renon fortress and a pleasant companion on several official and unofficial occasions. We shall miss him and wish him good fortune.

The work that Australian consulates do is not well understood, especially among that cohort of impecunious or troubled Aussie travellers, their relatives and the media, who seem to think the list of duties includes getting them out of trouble or safely home. It doesn’t.

Perhaps the consular function is incompletely understood even by some within the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra, whose website helpfully lists Facebook and Twitter sites operated by various Australian missions around the world. One listing will pique the Gallic worriers at the Quai d’Orsay in Paris: the “embassy” in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia.

Farmer’s successor had not been officially announced by Canberra at diary deadline time. Suffice to say we look forward to welcoming her in due course.

A Braw Idea

Jock McDaniels, who when he’s being his usual self is known as Jack Daniels or John M Daniels, is organizing Burns’ Night in Bali.  It’s on Jan. 25, the bard’s birthday (in 1759). Entirely by coincidence this is the day before the Australians celebrate the First Fleet’s arrival in 1788 in what was to become Sydney Harbour and India’s Republic Day, which dates from 1950 when the jewel in Britain’s disappearing imperial age removed itself from the crown.

Burns’ Night is a braw idea (and a welcome addition) to the calendar of Curious Bule Feasts that must confound the Balinese, especially as this one will inevitably involve men dressed as lassies. Memo Jock/Jack/John M: eschew the kilt. It can (and possibly should) be worn by pipers and assorted soldiery as an emblem of confected tradition. But it owes its public popularity to the fact that Good Queen Vic, who was otherwise a rather dour Hanoverian, rather liked the thought of favourite ghillie John Brown swinging through the heather.

Disclosure: Hector’s helper is entitled to wear various Stewart tartans and the Crawford, a lovely plaid. He never has except as a tie. Hector’s helper’s dad, may he rest in peace, always believed that the fates had smiled kindly upon him, since the army unit in which he enlisted under age in the Great Depression was a Borders regiment and wore tartan trousers and not the kilt.

We should never forget the genesis of the garment. It began life as an informal wraparound arrangement for blokes who couldn’t afford trousers. It does have its uses though. One of the images of the 1997 British handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese that will remain forever with us is of a Scottish soldier bending forward – back to the crowd of dignitaries present – to lower the Union Flag for the last time.

The fans installed at the request of Mao’s successors to blow half a gale so that the Red Flag fluttered proudly on its ascent may possibly have been double agents. The soldier’s kilt fluttered hip high and bared his backside for the world to see. We hope he got a medal.  They should have minted one specially. Perhaps The Flower of Scotland? It forever settled the question of whether anything is worn under the kilt. And it possibly delivered a powerfully subliminal message to Beijing.

Burns’ Night – with doggerel (Rabbie’s favourite dish) and haggis plus trimmings (and whisky, Jock; it’s not whiskey!) – is at the Bali Dynasty Hotel in Kuta on the night in question. Haggis isn’t our bag. It’s not even our sheep’s stomach. But aye, we cuid go the neeps and tatties.

Jock’s taking bookings and has all the details.

Cultural Flowering

Taman Restaurant in Senggigi, Lombok, which is operated by the delightful Wiwik Pusparini and the intriguingly enigmatic Peter Duncan, is lending a hand to a headlong charge to bring literary culture to the village. This is good news even for people – such as the Diary – who nowadays travel with their entire library in their Kindles or other e-readers.

The restaurant was the venue on Jan. 11 for the launch of local author Derek Pugh’s book, Turn Left at the Devil Tree. Taman and the Lombok Writers’ Guild (memo certain Bali literary persons: note the possessive) put on the book launch along with a wine tasting, wines by Plaga.

Duncan and others tell us Senggigi is experiencing something of a mini-boom at the moment. That’s good to see. Hopefully it’s related in part to the Jetstar service from Perth to Lombok that took off last year.

Happy Ending

Followers of the Rhonda and Ketut romance – surely among the most successful product promotions ever even if only for its reinvention of the vastly overrated Kuta Cowboy – will be pleased to hear that it apparently has a happy ending. These might be two a penny in these parts, but some are better than others.

We learn this from the latest ad in the Safe Driving Rewards campaign for Australian vehicle insurer AAMI. The advertisement, from big Aussie agency Badjar Ogilvy, features Rhonda and Ketut apparently answering the question of whether she will choose Ketut or high school heartthrob Trent Toogood. It follows an earlier “Who’s Right for Rhonda?” campaign.

The story line is trite but trippy. Rhonda returns to the empty hall of her school reunion where Ketut had last been seen arriving after Rhonda has gone the grapple with Tentacle Trent. But Trent is a fickle fellow. Later he is snapped to attention by the fulsome charms of Rhonda’s female friend.

Rhonda was introduced to promote AAMI’s Safe Driver Rewards in October 2011. Her trip to Bali and meeting Ketut went to air the following March. The romantic tension between the two characters caught the Australian public’s attention (prurience beats politics every time) and the ad became an internet sensation. A Facebook page was dedicated to Rhonda and Ketut and of course the t-shirt sector made a killing.

Hector tweets @scratchings