The View From The Other Side

As Kipling said, woman—once she has taken the bit be tween her teeth and bolted—can prove more deadly than the male, although most are still disposed (and a good thing, too) to stay quietly at home having babies and not-so-quietly wash ing dishes.

THE rebel female we are concerned with in Revolt In Paradise (Paradis b in this case meaning Bali and not, for once, a Pacific island), is called K’tut Tantri and, at a later stage of her career, Surabaya Sue.

She was probably born with an English name, as her parents were from the Isle of Man, but this she shed early in her lively career.

When still a young girl she went with her mother to America and by 1932 was a naturalised citizen

9K.S£S*“

"or a smntnal thou/h shl

Ay by°fr e ighter ef forthwhh Indi6S ' JtshLld be made clear from the outset that this is a book that no

fn D bi? iSa

could possibly find to his liking.

Ktut went to the Indies as no or H 1 I n^l tourist and once there and settled m, she identified herself with the Indonesians and their cause .

The Dutch are the villains of her piece, and worse, in some respects, than the Japanese, who merely provided an interlude.

If K’tut were not so one-eyed about this alleged Dutch villainy she might be more convincing, if less of a woman. On only one occasion does she appear to have taken any notice of a Dutchman in the 15 years of her residence in Indonesia, and that was when one told her that the war with Japan would last only three months, She believed him and refused evacuation to Australia. The war, of course, lasted three years, Q oes "Not Done" pro- P° rtion of stuffed-shirts and the

1932 vtotage,lh^mfcr^Ame 0 ”-

about‘same 6 “at“of’ Iny

“ CO mes to his notice.

K’tut has a peculiar talent for do ing no t-done thing and for get in hair and she began ear i y j n her Bali career when, after / ep eatedly being warned off, s h e headed for the interior in her car, determined to settle down just where the petrol gave out.

Fortuitously, the petrol-tank ran (Over)

mtside the gate of a Rajah’s e, she went inside and was ;ed by the Rajah and his y—just like that, time went on she was given a name—K’tut Tantri which s fourth-born child; was in ;ed in a new religion, learned 7 and Balinese, wore Balinese ne and dyed her hair black se her natural red hair was, in reserved only for demons and es, and in any event did not with Balinese clothes.

The Gossip Started t Rajah had a charming son, 3 Anak Agung Nura, and it t long before gossip was cir ng about him and K’tut; rly, when she later built and . hotel on the beach it was ired amongst the European ition that it was really a ;1. believed that these rumours leliberately set afloat by Dutch Is —although most people who 1 a small tropical community tell her differently. ;n the Japanese invaded Java 2 most Indonesians believed, st, that through them they be liberated from the Dutch. were soon disillusioned, gh of course the Japanese in of the Indies did lead, ;h some strange by-ways, to te independence.

Japs invaded Bali before and K’tut escaped from there abaya, where she was for some jefore the Japs arrived, a while they treated her well, entually persuaded themselves he was an American spy. In she was beaten, starved and ated, and on one occasion to walk naked down a in Bali carrying a sign in saying; “The Yankee Mata it was Lady Godiva. and not Sari, all over again. The Japs )t reckoned on Balinese sense desty, and when they saw tvas happening they fled in and slammed doors and ps shut, leaving the Japs, now foolish and losing face fast, ig the street with the naked, woman.

Still Hung On

after the Japanese war K’tut had not had enough )k to the Javanese hills with

ias fighting for Indonesian

adence. She became associ vith the present President no, indulged in espionage and ast for the “freedom radio s” (and thus earned the nick )f Surabaya Sue), ly, it was decided that it be K’tut who would attempt ?ak through the Dutch le to tell Indonesia’s story to side world—the outside world, case, being Australia.

This was not without good reason Most Australians will remember the immediate post-war years when the wharfies were calling our inter national policy by declaring black the vessels of those nations that didn’t please them. This was evidently interpreted by K’tut and her mates as being support from Australians as a whole—a belief that was bolstered by the fact that the Government of the day allowed her to land without a passport. (In her book she gives Australia, with India, top marks for having helped the cause of Indonesian in dependence most).

According to K’tut, her visit to Australia caused snowballing sensa tions of no mean order (received

jubilantly by the trade unions, cursed by the “reactionary press” and offered 100,000 guilders by the spokesman for a group of Dutch businessmen if she would go away and forget Indonesia), although your Australian reviewer cannot now recall the visit at all.

One practical result of it was the Indonesian Medical Aid Society and a considerable amount of money to relieve distress and want.

What Happened To Her What happened to K’tut after her Australian adventure, except that she went back to America, neither the author nor her publishers say.

What she tells in this book merely proves, of course, what we said in

leginning—there are more ways , woman to make her mark on svorld than by washing dishes having babies.

VOLT IN PARADISE. Published by Heinemann Ltd. Australian price.

Old Something

pain

INAGERS of the less jphisticated sort will like eoffrey Household’s Spanish an adventure story of the sh coast near Asturias, on the )f Biscay. s is the first book Household wrote —it was published first 36—and since then he has i to adult novels, of which ; Male, published in 1939, first his name well known, isehold has been a man of I careers; banker in Rumania, ia shipper in Spain, and 1 other things in the United ;, Spanish America and the lent. ing the war he was an gence officer in the Middle All of this provides good round material for adventure Spanish Cave is set in pre itionary Spain, but the date t show. Dick Garland, 15. with his brother, a railway or, in Asturias, and with his nen and other Spanish friends le to clear up the ancient ry of why, from time to time, were without a trace sunk off ave of the Angels, in calm er. le exploring the labyrinths of nd cave, Dick and his friends :hat it was inhabited by a

:hing”, whose identity they

only guess at. Some said it a plesiosaur—a prehistoric hitherto believed to have ixtinct. ther it was a plesiosaur—and •e is a Monster in Loch Ness, ot a plesiosaur in Asturias— ther kind of “something”, the nakes for a lot of suspenseful ure m its telling.

SPANISH CAVE. Published by Head. Australian price, 13/3.)

-it-Yourself

fould Help

H some books it would be a 'eat kindness on the part of le publishers if a leaflet of tions —as in a model aero kit or a new vacuum cleaner enclosed. indness for busy book re ». that is; if you happen to the declining minority who nsure, it no doubt would be tely fascinating to take time rapple with a book like Three Minikoi, by Kjeld Abell.

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a frus trating book—even lacking the do it-yourself instructions—if one could read it in the original Danish; it’s likely that Danish doesn’t translate so well into English.

And even allowing for these natural drawbacks, it still does have its moments—although not sufficient of them to “get in” a working book reviewer who, after a hard day at the office, is absolutely guaranteed to be lacking in the sense of iev possessed by this writer.

Kjeld Abell went on a visit to China, by slow boat, seven years after the Communistic experiment began. He is accompanied on the boat trip by his girl-friend (real) and three ghosts who, while he is

being impressed by the recreated Chinese empire, turn into something that is symbolic of the prejudices and fears of Western Europeans.

The ghosts were Bella, Virginia and Archie, who had been passengers on the vessel on her maiden voyage 20 years before. However, they had prankishly tried to go ashore by row boat to one of the small islands off Ceylon, and had got drowned. It was their ghostly habit thereafter to board the vessel off the island on leg of the journey that took tbe ship on to China and back.

There is a lesson in this book for all of us. (It says so on the jacket). (THREE FROM MINIKOI. Published by Seeker & Warburg Ltd. Australian price (Over)