Author pic Vanessa Hearman
Armed with only a school atlas and a compass, Alfredo Alves, was the only one in a group of seventeen men, women and a six-month-old baby, that clambered aboard a small rickety fishing boat on the Western side of Dili, the capital of Indonesian-occupied East Timor, who had any sailing experience. Under the cover of darkness, the vessel, the Tasi Diak headed for Darwin, the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory. If they were to succeed, theirs would be the first boat to escape East Timor during Indonesian rule and sail to mainland Australia.
Due to the vessel’s manner of arrival, they collided with Australia’s policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers. This book is part of a larger historical study of East Timorese diaspora in Australia which held 1600 Timorese asylum seekers. In part, it is also a study of a burgeoning field in the area of migration and refugee histories, where historians deploy new approaches to develop a more critical understanding of how Australia’s settler-colonial status shapes its policies towards its Asia-Pacific neighbours, Indigenous people and refugees. This book shines a much needed searchlight on the East Timorese in Australia, some two decades after independence.
Later conflicts by Indonesian displaced evacuees became long-term refugees, known as South-East Asia’s ‘forgotten’ refugees along with Cambodians and Laotians, which were overshadowed by the Vietnamese refugees who came when the Vietnamese War ended in 1975. Family reunion schemes were frustrated by both Indonesian and Australian governments’ inaction in realising that goal. Resistance to Indonesian rule by East Timorese made transfer to Australia next to impossible. The underground groups that actioned protests were behind the voyage of the Tasi Diak, brought the occupation to Darwin’s front door. Australia’s government claimed that those who arrived in 1990 were Portuguese citizens, remaining outside the protection obligation under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, but after the Santa Cruz massacre, there was a strong moral aspect to their refugee claims. A hardened government resolve to deny protection obligations ensued.
Had it not been for the very public and dramatic arrival of the vessel in 1997, legal opinion might have been confined to ‘arcane debates in legal venues’. The Tasi Diak’s voyage across the Timor Sea, also challenged the government’s efforts to delineate borders and control, in Australia’s favour, a body of water that has, over centuries, remained significant to island communities to the North of Australia, like fishing rights, designated protected areas and restricted zones. This book highlights the interconnection between countries in seeing the ocean as sites, forces and spaces for communities to mingle, trade and learn from each society. Also beyond the survival story, the book examines how this single arrival sent shockwaves through the Australian government, destabilising its diplomatic relationship with the Suharto regime and which provided a vital spark for the East Timorese independence movement.
Ultimately, the Tasi Diak, serves as a historical pivot point, marking a triumph for the human spirit and also heralding the beginning of Australia’s increasingly hardline treatment of asylum seekers. These and other intriguing questions raising human rights and the ethics of a humane refugee regime. The public narrative of seperatedness and the practices of Othering non-white migrant and arrivals by sea, runs counter to the history and reality of Australia’s relationship with Asia and Asians. Australia’s anxieties about its place in the region caused a cast-iron exclusion mentality. The fact that Australia is ”girt by sea” has played a large role in Australian political and emotional stories and the nation’s panicked reactions to refugee boats coupled with bipartisan support for maintaining offshore detention centres has not changed much to today. Although the boat arrivals represent a minuscule intake of total immigration they challenge the most sacred principle of who controls population intakes which continues a long xenophobic tradition. Australia has been labeled as the leading architect of the most racist border regime in the contemporary world by imprisoning and torturing those pejoratively referred to as ‘boat people’
When the lights of Darwin came into view for the floating refugees, it marked the beginning of an almighty struggle to challenge powerful interests on a distant shore. Critically, this boat arrival would herald the start of Australia’s worsening treatment of asylum seekers. Vennessa Hearman is pivotally placed as a historian of South-Eastern Asia specialising in political violence, human rights, and historical memory as ‘witnesses’ in Indonesia and Timor-Leste. She is author to the acclaimed Unmarked Graves: death and survival in the anti-communist violence in East Java, Indonesia. She is associate professor in the Humanities faculty in Curtain university. She has authored over 40 journal articles and book chapters. With this book it certainly triggers how Australia’s lack of compassion led to years of incarceration. The book has gravitas and makes for a deep read and a invaluable resource.
PUBLISHED BY MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS (12 MAY 2026) AND DISTRIBUTED BY SIMON SCHUSTER
