SUNDAY 21 SEPTEMBER

PHOTOS TO FOLLOW WITH GOOD WIFI

I start the day with no real agenda apart from visiting an old Dutch fort, Fort Rotterdam. The Dutch used this fort to oversea the harbour. There is a magnificent museum here that explains the history of Sulawesi and it’s many cultures. It tells of how Islam was introduced in the 1400s by Arabic traders.

While here I meet Ali. He is a 62 year old pedal cab operator. He escorts me around the fort and tells me stories about his father working here and his father’s experience of the Japanese during WW2. He offers to take me on a tour around this part of Macassar. We visit the fish markets and the busy harbour. How exciting it would have been to be here when pirates plied these waters. Makassar is famous for it. Their are many bars around this part of town that are remnant of those crazy times.

We go onto a royal burial ground where a king is buried with his family. They are imortalised in the memories of their followers to this day. The grave of the king is visited regularly by Muslim worshippers.

We call into a local cafe where I experienced the best coffee in all my time in Indonesia. We chat with the locals. Ali translates the conversations for me. Outside a Muslim funeral procession passes by with great colour and spectacle. The street is temporarily clogged with bikes and chatter. I love this genuine experience.

We move on to visit the biggest mosque in town. I wander around with little distraction to the colorful proceedings. A wedding is in progress and the costumery is stunning. Nobody seems to mind my non-Muslim presence.

On the way back I offer to change places with Ali. I pedal him while he nervously takes the seat. The brakes aren’t that good and there are a few tense moments while I jaggedly negotiate the traffic. It’s fun and bystanders are amused if not confused, but Ali soon takes back the reins. This pedal cab cost him equivalent of $200 and is his life.

I catch up with Adam again, over a few beers and dinner. We find we have more in common than just two Australians at the same hotel in Makassar. Adam did his honours study at James Cook University. And for my JCU friends, he is Jan Marrinan’s nephew. I know Jan well. How small is this world.

Adam’s archaeological field site is close to where Alfred Russel Wallace had his base while collecting butterfly’s and other critters. He was a naturalist in the mid 1800s who noticed a huge difference between the animals on Sulawesi with those of neighbouring Borneo, despite the two islands have sublimate climate and geography. As I understand it, Wallace worked with Charles Darwin to explain this curious situation. They deducted that the islands had very different geographical histories, Borneo with Asia and Sulawesi with the pacific. A line separating the two and beyond became known as the Wallace line. This theory was later confined tectonically.