TRIP THROUGH JAVA

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20989, 16 December 1939, Page 17 (Supplement)

TRIP THROUGH JAVA

MRS BULLOCK’S IMPRESSIONS “On a recent trip through Java I was very impressed with the happy, contented bearing of the people,” said Mrs F. Bullock, Clifton Road, who recently returned from a trip to fhe East, when interviewed by a Times reporter. With a population of approximately £5 million in an area about the size of our North Island it seemed as though the natives wouid have to make a living by taking m each other’s washing, but apparently they have found a happier solution than that. They work for very little pay but their wants are few and nature in Java is very bountiful. Everyone is busy and there is a constant coming and going; it was a continual puzzle to us that, with the native villages so close together, there should be such a steady stream of traffic on the roads at all hours of xhe day and night. Coolies with laden panniers swung on bamboo poles across their shoulders pass and repass. Vegetables and fruit, tinware and lampshades, strangely coloured drinks and live fowls, every commodity one can think of is carried in this way, and the whole makes a very picturesque scene under the blazing sun. Winding in and out of the foot traffic the busy little pony carriages make their musical procession. The ponies, from the island of Timor, are somewhat larger than Shetland ponies and are gaily be-decked with bright harness and hung with bells, and in addition there is a gong worked by the driver’s foot which is sounded on any, and every provocation, and underneath all other noise is the constant clip-clop, clip-clop of the wooden solid sandals. A modern, swiftly-threading motor car causes a sudden swirl in the tide of pedestrians, but it passes, the gap closes, the crowd melts together again and the old order resumes its ancient way.

Always it is there, the feeling that the East is immeasurably old; in spite of Dutch progress and the modernity of splendid hotels its spirit broods over the land, and it comes as no surprise to be told that the first known records of Javan life date back to 200 8.C., and that the civilisation of those days is very little different from the civilisation there today. Terraced Hillsides of Ric* The Javanese are irorn hydraulic engineers and their methods of watering the rice fields has not been improved upon by the colonising Dutch. Wherever they can get water they grow rice, and the terraced hillsides and tender emerald of the young paddy rice are the predominating features of the Java landscape. Lying so close to the equator Java has no distinct summer and winter season, the climate is equable, and rice, which is a six-month crop can be grown all the year round. “Java* means “seeds”; the first immigrants coming, it is believed from the south of India, found the island such a granery of valuable wild seeds that they named it “Java Wewan,” the isle of seeds. Today, in addition to feeding its own immense population, Java exports rice, tobacco, rubber, kapok, tea, coffee, cocoa, sago, tapioca, and other tropical products. In the early sixteenth century Java formed one of the romantic spice islands and was exploited by the Portugese, traces of whose occupation can still be seen in Batavia. The Dutch occupation followed about a century later. Batavia, the capital, is a city of some 600,000 inhabitants of whom about 38,000 are Europeans. There is a quaint and fascinating mingling of old and new. Beautiful modern buildings and magnificent hotels rub shoulders with primitive native bazaars. Ox-carts and taxis contend for right of way, bicycles—of which there are 300,000 registered in Batavia—are ridden side by side by natives, some in sarongs and some in the latest in gentlemen’s snappy striped pyjamas. Sweet-meat vendors .squat on the pavement in front of the Harmony Club, a splendid building which has never closed its doors, day or night, for 147 years. Truly as we heave Java we feel that we can endorse the saying that “here we find the comfort of the West married to the romance of the East.”