Bridges of Friendship: Reflections on Indonesia’s Early Independence and Australia’s Volunteer Graduate Scheme

Bridges of Friendship unveils the personal ties between Indonesians and Australians in the newly formed Indonesian Republic. This work brings together previously unpublished manuscripts by Betty Feith, who has combined teaching and lecturing with a lifelong involvement in church and humanitarian service, and Kurnianingrat Ali Sastroamijoyo, an educator who worked extensively in English language teaching and training, and who took an active part in the Indonesian Revolution.
Feith’s history of the Volunteer Graduate Scheme in Indonesia 1950-1963 provides a bird’s-eye view of the ethos and workings of the Volunteer Graduate Scheme, an initiative under which Australian graduates were employed in the Indonesian civil service. Her nuanced and insightful narrative reflects her intimate involvement in the inception and running of the Scheme.
Kurnianingrat’s reminiscences, ‘Other Worlds in the Past’, offer insights into Indonesian social and cultural history at a critical time for the nation, as historian Jean Gelman Taylor observes, at the same time as they chronicle Kurnianingrat’s own experiences and perspective. Kurnianingrat’s memoirs include a fascinating and moving account of daily life in occupied Yogyakarta during the struggle for independence against the Dutch. A common thread in these works is the friendships of Kurnianingrat and Harumani Rudolph-Sudirdjo with Australian volunteer graduates, Betty Feith and Ailsa Thomson Zainuddin. The final section of Bridges of Friendship, containing extracts of correspondence, illustrates the lasting, mutual interests, connections and commitments developed among this circle of friends.