Don Barnby - East Timor - Australian Federal Police

Evacuation of Gleno

(Geoff Hazel) walked out in front of them, because the coppers, the Indonesian coppers … walked out in front of them and, you know, open hands, unarmed, and tried to calm them down. He got hit, I think in the shoulder or the side of the face with a bit of shrapnel from one of the rocks, bullets hitting rocks and then he came back and everybody else, all the other DEOs.

And apart from the Magnificent Seven, we called them, the Kiwis, the Yanks and the Aussies, everybody else had dived under the back of the Land Rovers in the riverbed, and they were advancing on us, and this, two or three militia advanced on me, I was standing next to Morrow and I thought, "This is his bloody shitty" and I went to pick up a piece of bamboo to whack one of these bastards and it fell apart.

It was full of white ants and I just, like you can imagine, full of adrenaline, scared, anxious, angry, frustration, I just burst into tears and Morrow was trying to throw rocks at these bastards and then, suddenly, somebody blew a whistle or something and they all packed off, but it was looking a bit hairy.

So, then Geoff negotiated that we would get, they would allow the UN Land Rovers to drive back to the police station back down the river, back to the police station and then through, then he went up to the POLRI commander's office and the TNI and negotiated the pickup of the remaining, which was most of the ballot boxes at the sportsground if it was considered safe.

So there, the Indonesians job was to allay, keep the militia back and get, secure the ballot, secure the LZ, basically, so the ballot boxes could go on. So, this took a few hours. Then we radioed Dili and told them, "Okay, you can come back now and pick up the remainder." And so, they did. They flew in and when they landed, not in the terms of agreement, the militia leader for that area with the POLRI commander, walked up to the chopper, he wanted to inspect that there was no weapons or anything on board.

And I said, "Jesus, this could be a disaster. All he's got to do is have a grenade, boom, blow the chopper. Throw it in. Boom." Unbelievable. Anyway, we finally succeeded in loading all the ballot boxes on this Puma, and then it took off, and then the militia started coming in, like, you've seen those African scenes, jackals come in and they start … so we all skivvied back to the police station and then for the next seven or 10 days, I got evacuated on the seventh, so it would be seven or eight days.

How many days in August? 31 or 30? 31? Is it 31 days in August, I can't remember. Anyway, the ballot was on the 31st. So, seven days, so we called it the siege of Gleno for seven days and then we all retreated back. Negotiations were made with the militia again. You're negotiating with thugs through the police who’s supposed to be helping us and the TNI. We had to take the, all the DEA's and the civilian staff. A lot of them came from New York, but a lot of Australian DEOs, down to Dili.

And the Kiwi police were evacuated. Their government pulled them out on the 31st or the 1st. I think 31st or whatever. So, they went down, so Geoff asked for volunteers. So, Morrow and I and Randy and another Aussie copper, Peter Watt, we decided to take all the DEOs and civilian staff that wanted to be evacuated down to Dili, not the Timorese staff, they were staying up there at this stage.

So, we loaded them all up and then there was a series of roadblocks all the way down the mountain. I think it was about two and a half hours driving over mountain roads, pretty dicey mountain roads because you'd have a mountain on one side of the road and the other side of it, then a 600-foot drop. The roads were terrible. And we had to negotiate in that trip alone a lot of militia roadblocks to get out.

We had our police escort, again, they did nothing. So we got all them down to Dili, then we came back up, then, because the situation in Gleno was getting really, really bad, against UN orders, we all decided that we would evacuate the Timorese that helped us during the whole of the period, registration, everything, if they wanted to come with their families, because we did a headcount, we've got, we had enough Land Rovers.

They wanted to be evacuated with their own, some of them had their own little tuk tuk vehicles and all that. If they wanted to be evacuated, we'd take them. The UN directive had come out a few days before. No UN personnel, locally employed UN personnel to be evacuated. It's that UN had to be bi-partisan stuff. It had happened in Croatia and Bosnia.

The UN stood by while there was slaughters going because they were betwixt in between. So, we said, "No, this is BS, if they want to come, we'll evacuate them." So, we spread the word, went all around, they brought them in and we lined up a convoy of, Land Rover at the front with Morrow and I. Land Rover at the back with Randy and Pete and all their little vehicles in the middle, and we evacuated 160 people, I think, about 160.

So, Geoff radioed Dili and said, "You're not going to like this, but we're evacuating our staff because they're going to get killed basically." And some of them already had been in the intervening period. So, we're all lined up outside the police station, that was in the morning, we decided to do it. The Militia wouldn't lift their roadblock. Geoff negotiated them to lift them. This was over a period of hours.

We had these people crammed into these vehicles. It was hot. We had bottles of water giving them out, giving them tins of food. We were a bit ragged because we’d been eating the same things as them for the last whatever month and so we finally got the green light. That was about five or six o'clock, again, two and a half hour three, depending on how many roadblocks and whatever.

So, it's got to be dark when we got there. So, we went through, got through the big, the main militia roadblock by negotiating and limited the police. Let them out. So, we went up through the mountain roads, we’re in the front and about halfway over the mountain range. It's pitch dark. We're going in and Randy in the rear vehicle, the Yank, said, "Mate, I got a tail. I got a truckload of militia."

And they’re firing over my vehicle at the back because we couldn't hear that, we're right up the front of the convoy. They're firing over back and then coming up and braking and swerving and trying to force me off the road down this valley. So, he said, "I'm gonna do something."

So, what he did do, he told us when we got down to Dili, he let them get really close and hit the brakes, because they were close, they hit the brakes. This truck load of militia swerved and about 20 militia went over the side of the cliff. So, they’re gone. He said, "All clear". So, we kept going down and unbeknownst to us, as we approached the outskirts of the Comora bridge near the airport in Dili, this truck came out of a side street with bloody, a big sort of search light and we thought it was militia because Dili was reeling with riddled with Militia.

And so, we told all the people in the back of all the vans to "Get down, get down, get down." So, they've got down, they're all huddling in, looking inwards here and this car screamed up alongside our car, which is the first in the convoy. And do you know what it was? It was a CNN film crew! I mean, really? And this woman, leaned out of the car, she said, "Oh, you're that, you're the people evacuating the locals from Ermera are you?

We’ve heard it’s really dangerous up there." Jesus Christ. I mean, yeah, like really? Anyway, said a few things and we finally got to the UN headquarters in Dili. Barrier went up, we all drove in and one of the vehicles that have done the whole trip, as soon as the guy, who's one of the private vehicles, soon as the guy turned off his motor, the whole gearbox and diff just dropped in big puddles of water. So, anyway, they knew we were coming. So, the UN people came out got all the locals and they put them in the assembly hall, because it was an old school, so high school. So, got all them.

Rest in the Hotel Turismo

There was people down in Dili, Australian police that we knew, that were on our contingent and they knew what was happening. We're sitting in the vehicle like, just a cup of coffee would have been good. I mean, we've just come through, like, a bit of hell, and we’ve got nowhere to go.

So, we thought we would stay there that night. And this UN official not an Australian and the mighty UN official came out and he said, "You can't stay here. We've got no accommodation." Like, gobsmacked and Morrow, we gave them the bird, "Stuff you" and so we got out and they said, "You can't go out there either. There's militia running everywhere."

So, we took off and Morrow, who had been in Cambodia, Mozambique, he said, "Mate, my mate Mark Dodd, who is a journo for the Australian and Hamish MacDonald and Lindsey Murdoch, "They're staying at that, I know they're here, they're staying at the Dili hotel, we'll make a beeline for there." Randy said, "No, no, mate. Guys, I'm going off to where I know some American coppers are living and Peter Watt went with him."

So, we went to the Hotel Turismo, I think it was in Dili and we went in and there's a whole heap of journos in there because this story ‘d got around, right, that we evacuated all these people. So, we went in there and we're just, yeah, like, about six days growth. muddy. All we'd had lately was few drinks of water and a can of spandex or something.

And so, we went in there and the journos, being journos obviously, wanted the story. So, this girl came, I think she was on SBS and she came up and she said, "Do you guys, want something to eat?" "Please." So, she made us, I always remember, it's a fond memory that Morrow's go too, she made us this beautiful Timorese bread and big slices of fresh cut ham, proper ham, with mustard on it.

Wolf that down with a few beers but because we were a dehydrated, hadn't eaten and slept for a while, and Mark Dodd's mate wasn't in the group of journalists. So, they're asking us questions and we're a bit drunk by this stage, two cans of beer had gone straight to our head and we're getting a bit voluble, so saying what we did, telling them what we did and Mark Dodd came in and saw us and went over and said, "Enough. No more. These guys are buggered. I'm taking them"’

So. "G’day Mark. How are you?" because I knew Mark from Canberra anyway, he was a good mate of Morrow’s. So, he took us off to get us away from that. So yeah. So, he took us up to his room and we had lots of coffee and then he, those three journos. Lindsay, Hamish and Mark were in a house right on the seafront. So, we ended up going down there and we stayed there that night and I remember we spent the night lying on the bonnet of the car listening to Country and Western music on the tape deck.

Militia were going up and down outside the street, there were houses, again exploded. They were burning Dili and we went inside and we had a bit of a war council, could have got nasty. So, we all armed ourselves, basically. I had a piece of bamboo with some nails in it and Morrow had the same. Mark Dodd had a spear gun and he wore his, had a pair of goggles on.

Another guy had a tennis racket and we rigged up on the front door that they'd have to burst into if they ever came to get us because they knew where all the journos were living. We rigged up a rock booby trap. We tied it up, so soon as they opened the door, the first guy in would get a flat head. So, we rigged all that up and we got bourbon, they had bourbon, and I don't know where they got it all but they had heaps of bourbon. We hadn't seen this stuff.

We've been drinking Bintang beer, which was not a bad beer, and so drinking bourbon and apparently I was standing up talking to Doddy and Lindsay and I just passed my glass to one of them and I just collapsed onto the bed and apparently I was laid out like this and they put my hands like I was in a coffin and apparently I was like that at seven o'clock in the morning. I didn't move and I was woken up by the smell of cooking and it was Hamish or Lindsay cooking bacon and eggs like that. Yeah, like the shark in Finding Nemo. "Blood" he can smell the blood in the water, was like, "Oh good." So, we got up and had that.

Then Morrow and I had a quick look around and we wanted to get back up the mountain. So, we walked out and had a look up and down this road that goes along the seafront and on the two big pillars outside the driveway into this house that they were staying was two big red crosses. So, we went back, then we looked at a few other houses and there was no red crosses.

There was just that, the Australians, they'd been there for about two months stay. So, the local bad guys knew exactly where these Aussies were staying. So, we went back and talked to, Mark and Lindsey and Hamish and said, "That doesn't look good" So, we had to, that’s right, Morrow and I, we teamed back up with the Yank, Randy, and Peter. We went to local police headquarters in Dili to get permission to go up and they said, "You can't go up. It's forbidden zone."

They use these stupid terms, forbidden zone. So, we weren’t getting anywhere there. So, we went back to Mark, and we said, "Looks like you got us for at least another night, mate." So, we had another big bourbon night and Hamish or Lindsey had been out and got some beautiful French pastries. So, we ate all that stuff and getting a little bit sick of Garth Brooks by this stage because they only had a few tapes and then we then we went back to thing, so they said, "Oh, yes, we will give you a police escort." But, ah, that's right, no, sorry, sorry.

In the intervening stuff, that night, sorry, before Mark, when Mark got us away from all the journalists, Tim Fischer, Marise Payne, and Mr. Simon Crean, three politicians were staying there. They were up oversighting the election on the 30th. They were doing a bit of a trip around, going to watch, all over East Timor. They were there and Tim Fischer and Marise Payne and Simon Crean were all flying back to Canberra the next day.

They heard we were in the Hotel Turismo. They heard what had happened with Gleno, evacuating all these people. They sent a message down and one of the staff came in and said, "Look, Tim Fischer, you guys want to talk to Tim? He's flying out. He wants to have a chat to you guys."

So, Tim, in his inimitable way, and I'd met him when I work with Bob Hawke, so he said, "What do you … Jesus," and I knew Marise Payne really well and I'll tell you a side story later on about Marise Payne. She saved my life, just before I flew out to Darwin.

Anyway, we went in there and had a bit of a chat and Tim, as he always did when he was, he took notes, copious notes, opened this big, like a ledger, got his pen out and he started writing. And he said, "Right, you're from Gleno, we've heard about the riverbed incident.

I've heard that the incident at Atsabe where Phil Hunter saved the guy, Phil drag the guy out away from the militia who had stabbed him and he died later on and Phil and Max Knoth had carried him up under all this gunfire into the house where he died, sadly, so they knew about that.

They knew about Gleno, they knew about Ermera. They'd heard that, so Tim's writing all these notes and Marise was saying, so we'd finished that. We had a beer and he said, "I'm going back to brief Parliament tomorrow." He did and the story that we told him is in Hansard, apparently.

Return to Gleno

Marise said to me, she said, "Don, what's happening? Are you staying in Dili now?" And I said, "No, Marise. There's four of us and we're going back to Gleno." She said, "You can't, you're mad. You can't, you can't go up there. It's too dangerous."

And I said, "Well, yeah, but that's where all our colleagues are." Anyway, she probably never thought she'd see me again but anyway. So, we did that and then after two days of negotiating with the POLRI in Dili, we secured a police escort back up the road.

So we went through all the roadblocks that we fought our way through before, got our way back and then the siege started, then the police commander, before he got evacuated, the POLRI police commander said, "If you guys want to, for safekeeping, come in and throw your sleeping bed rolls down in the police station". So, yeah, that's probably a good idea.

So, we did that and so that night all these coppers, and I think I've got a photo somewhere of us all lying around with the mozzie nets over us in this area, and we're all just sort of eating ration packs and sleeping because we're tired. But that night I wake up for a nocturnal wee and I went outside, and I said to Morrow, "Mate, do you get a funny feeling about what's happening around here? Why were we invited into here?" He said, "Yeah, I was thinking about that."

So, we didn't go back inside. We stayed outside, and we got back into our Land Rover and during the night about 3am, in the morning, there was Elvis with his Ray Bans on at 3am in the morning, I mean, cool, too cool for school and the TNI Commander, Kopassus guy, Kopassus and TNI Commander.

The police commander was nowhere to be seen, had a little house on the premises but he was nowhere to be seen and they were going around all the little hoochies around the place pointing out, and it was only the Australians sleeping under the mozzie unit.

None of the Thais, the Pakistanis. None of the Yanks, was just the Australians. So, went back in, "Woke Geoff up and said, "Mate. I think in the morning, we better go. This has just happened." And he agreed. So, we left that day the police commander was taken down to Dili because he was helping us a lot.

He was a nice guy. As I said, he was a really, so that didn't go well with the authorities. I hope he was all right back in Indonesia or whatever. So, he's probably taken back to Indonesia. It's all conjecture but, anyway, the next day we went up to where Geoff had his house.

Our bad manor, while I was down in Dili, our bad manor where Morrow and I and the Kiwis and the Spanish, that had been burnt down. So, we had nowhere to go. All our stuff had gone. So, we went up to where Geoff and three or four New York DEOs and UN people, staff had been living before they evacuated and there was just Geoff up there and he said, "Mate, there’s three houses that are vacant, come up here."

So we stayed there. We stayed there for about the next five days. Meanwhile, we barricaded the door. Morrow and I did a quick trip down to the market to see if there was anything left. We got the last remains of a carton of Bintang beer.

Threw that in the Land Rover, took it up, found a few jerry cans of fuel and we managed to fill up most of the Land Rovers. We were told by Dili to go back to the UN police station which was locked up but it was still, you know, all the windows were broken and evacuate and save it all the equipment the computers, and that was a stupid order.

So, there's a photo of me throwing about three toilet rolls, if they want everything, they can get the bog rolls, too, so we threw those in and all the pens and pencils and, like just stupid stuff and then we went back up and for the next five days.

There was militia everywhere. They’re still burning Gleno. Shootings. We were told in that period that the daughters of one of the local Timorese that had helped us were being raped about 500 metres away and I knew them. They were from the village of Ermera.

So, we told Geoff and I said, "Mate, I know it's pointless probably but we'll just …" Morrow and I stayed together the whole time, so we packed in the Land Rover, got a pickaxe each, we went down and we got broken windows in the Land Rover and we couldn't even get near these girls and they had been raped and I think they were killed later on.

So, yeah, that sort of stuff was happening all over Gleno. So, we went back, and in that period, there was mainly Australians, the Kiwis had gone. So, there was Australians, Americans. All the other UN Police they found other places because they never seem to be around when you really needed them.

So, they'd gone off and skivved and while we were still down at the UN Police station at Gleno, Geoff was doing a headcount of all the coppers and he said, "Where are the two Malaysian police?" And Morrow and I, on our one little rounds around the police station, you know, crawling through the corn pod things, cornfield, we'd seen the two Malaysian coppers over at the POLRI police station, taking off their Malaysian police shirt and putting on POLRI Indonesian police T shirts because they spoke Indonesian, they were Muslims, and they were looking after themselves. So, we told Geoff, and in time of war that's shooting by firing squad stuff.

I mean that's traitors. Anyway, so he was still, you know, his brief was still to look after all the coppers of all the Nationals, which he did really good but in these three houses there was only Australians and Yanks. And there was a few, everybody was getting a bit frayed and nervous and whatever, so we drank up our beer and the nerves were getting really sort of tight.

So, I yelled out to them, I said, "Guys, Morrow has got a book that his girlfriend has sent over." It was called Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. Have you read it? Beautiful book. I think there's a movie of it, a beautiful story and I said, "It's a love story."

So, I said, Morrow and I got the last bit of beer that was down in the marketplace that wasn't trampled or destroyed, so I said, "Grab yourself a warm beer and Morrow will read you a passage." So, I said, "Bloody find a good one, mate" So, there's a few saucy paragraphs so Randy, one of the Yank coppers, lovely bloke, he took a photo and it was, it was all these grown coppers sitting on the floor with a can of beer just listening to Morrow read and it was just beautiful.

And, anyway, then Randy, who wrote beautiful poems, he had a book of poems he read, I said to Randy, because Randy and I did a few patrols together, and he was a really, really nice guy and I said, "Mate, read them that poem, Angel's wings are fragile things." And what I was trying to do, because there's a lot of guys that hadn't been on missions.

Morrow had. Geoff Hazel had, but he was in another house, and Randy, this Randy had been in Vietnam in the US Seabees, so there was a bit of experience and some inexperience, so we're trying to calm everybody down because it was mayhem outside.

We were looking at the windows that we'd bloody boarded up with mattresses, and they were walking around throwing grenades into bloody houses and bloody shooting, and yeah, like this was going on for about five days. It was just unbelievable.

So, yeah, he read out the poem and calmed a few people down. There's a photo of Randy and I spooning in bed because we, you know, there's hardly any beds left in this place. So, we both spooned and turned over and so, then, Geoff still had a radio in his little house, which is next door. Our evacuation date was the seventh, I think seventh of September.

So, Geoff came into our house, got in by the back door, and said, "Right, I’m gonna get all the vehicles. Gonna line up outside the police station and we're all going." So, he rang around, radios, got all the remaining nationality police that were all over the place. We all got our vehicles, line up there, big convoy. There's a photo of the last convoy.

So, we lined up outside the police station. I've got a photo of me standing looking at the vehicles and it was pretty, not pretty emotional. It was really emotional. As we went out, the militia had got all the locals that lived in Gleno, lined them up because for the two and a half months that I was there anyway, these people loved us, they were waving to us.

We used to chat and have coffee with them, talk and laugh, and they'd lined them up as we drove out, and the message was very clear, there goes your, because we kept telling the villagers all the time, "We will stay even if it gets pear shaped. We will stay and help you." Well, we were ordered out, we had to get out they were evacuating UNAMET from East Timor.

We didn't realise that. We thought we'd stay on until another contingent came in and it would go on. We thought it would peak and then go back down but it didn't, it was getting worse and worse and worse. So, they'd lined them all up and they were all, they would stand, these bastards were standing behind these rows of villagers with weapons as we drove past on our last convoy, and instead of looking at us and laughing and waving like they did, they didn't dare.

They're all, they're all, just because, then they raised, almost raised Gleno to the ground and killed a lot of people they. So, we got through and we're on this convoy and we're going through the mountain near the mountain pass where Randy turfed off this truckload of militia and suddenly one of the choppers, and it was a Huey chopper, AK back to Vietnam. Wok. Wok. Wok.

It was coming in and they were radioing through, and they were on the radio saying, "Guys there's a …" That's right, they didn't tell us what it was. They said, "There's a lot of militia lining roads and hiding in the bushes in the jungle and everything all the way back. So just be really careful."

But as we got to this really dangerous stretch where the road was curving around this mountain that side, valley, the chopper came down, hovered, like on a ridge line there, hovered and then took off and then dived down into the valley, then suddenly reappear there and come in at hover, hover.

Fast forward, when we got evacuated to Darwin, the pilot of that chopper, a Lloyd’s chopper, he was having a few beers in one of the bars in Darwin, he recognized us, you know, "You guys were in Ermera." "Yeah, yeah." And he said, "You were in that convoy." We said, "Yeah, yeah. What were you doing?"

The bloody TNI and the militia had set up an ambush with a machine gun on this pass, because if they opened up and hit the lead vehicle, then the last vehicle, you had nowhere to go except over the cliff and this chopper saw it, unarmed chopper, saw this, came down, hovered over the thing, really pissed them off, and then when they tried to get the, dive just back into the valley and then come up somewhere else, and they hovered there till all the convoy went through, the 12, 14 odd Land Rovers.

Mayhem in Dili

We got down into Dili, past the big militia headquarters that was near the Comora bridge near the airport and we went to the transport compound, which was not a transport company and everybody left there and got up into headquarters in Dili. So, we stayed there and then we got radioed, come up, come up to the main headquarters.

The Force Commander wants to have a word briefing, blah, blah, blah. So, we went up there. All the locals were still there in the assembly hall. They'd been there for that seven, eight days, nine, ten days. They were all coming in from all over Dili and that's when that scene, remember where they, a lot of them are outside, the Militia started firing and the TNI started firing and there was evidence that the militia and the TNI fired at locals, killed them, and the mothers had thrown their babies over the razor wire that was on the perimeter fence around UN headquarters in Dili and a lot of them got hurt, like razor wire, and they were throwing their babies over, because we couldn't get, the staff that were there couldn't get the one door through the wall open and then finally a bloke called Dave Savage got the door open and then they were passing these kids through, and then getting their mums and dads in and then locked the door.

So, while we were there waiting for this briefing, we were watching locals running up the mountain behind the UN Headquarters at Dili and being shot at by bloody militia and TNI here and bodies. Like, they were running up the hill, over, because it was thicker jungle on the other side, and they're off there, everybody was evacuated because Dili was in flames.

Leaving Dili

Anyway, we get this, we get the briefing and because Morrow and I had been on the first lift in on the 21st of June, we were on the first lift, we were going to be on the first lift out. So, our names were first and just as they read out our names, and then Geoff, there was a single, there was lots of noise going on, rifle shots and grenades.

There was a single, sinister rifle shot and I was standing next to Geoff listening to Alan Mills giving us this briefing, telling us that we're all a bit panicky and they didn't really have proper weapons and then there'd be a burst of automatic gunfire. Anyway, and there was a single shot, and Geoff was next to me and Morrow, and Geoff just collapsed.

What would you immediately think? Hit by sniper. So, we rolled on him, and we looked around, like is anybody going to help? There was coppers from all different, from everywhere, they’d all pissed off. So, we’re looking over him, feeling for blood and he was unconscious, and he got hit in the cheek or the shoulder back in Gleno but he was, we're all dehydrated and he just collapsed from exhaustion, dehydration, you know, strain. Anyway, we found out he was alright, so he was put on the first lift out too.

So, and the story continues a little bit, sorry, it is a long story. So, our names were read out, yeah, yeah, "Grab your bags" and we had our runaway packs, but we had left them when we dumped the vehicles in the school playground next door on the other side of this wall and I said to Morrow, "Mate, we’ll be going in about two or three hours and I've got some shit in that bag that I want." He said, "Yes, so have I."

So, we bought it there was stuff going on. So, we crawled through the, through under the wall, under the wire and we crawled in amongst all these parked UN vehicles. They all had broken windows, bullet holes in them and everything. We found our vehicle.

We opened the back door, got out our little runaway packs with our personal, a little bit of personal stuff and then we crawled all the way back and when we got back in one of the Aussies looked out, said, "You bastards are mad. You nearly got killed. You might have got killed for what? A bag, a pack?" "Yeah, well, there was stuff there that I want."

A new pair of undies and stuff. So we did that, then we got in the vehicle and every convoy that had gone in the previous week to Dili airport for whatever reason, had been ambushed by militia and because of our experience up the hill, we were dealing with those bad militia all the time. I just said to the UN, I think he was an American or a Brit cop controlling the convoy movement, you know, how many vehicles, whatever.

And I say, I went up to him and he said, "Well, you guys are on the next convoy" and he said, "You'll have a hairy trip because everybody’s been shot at and chased by militia all the way through Dili." and I said, "Just a point of interest. Do you tell the POLRI that there's a convoy coming in at say two o'clock, do you do tell them?" He said, "Yeah, yeah, we have to." I said, "Big mistake, huge, you don't tell them, because you tell the POLRI they tell TNI and TNI tells the militia, and they're waiting for you. So can we just try something?"

We had a convoy of four vehicles and so we’d got the vehicles that were working, and a lot of them were ours from Gleno and Ermera and Hatulia and that, and I said, "Let's not, just one convoy. It's on our heads. We've all agreed. Don't tell them.

Don't tell anybody. We'll just go, right." So come the appointed hour, we knew about a 30-minute drive, so we all took off and we're driving through, no problems. There was stuff happening all around, driving down streets, you know, we knew Dili pretty well. We drive down the street but then there was this big camp of militia right near Comora bridge, that was their headquarters, and it was just like Keystone Cops. It was like something like, you know, the double take.

There's this convoy of four UN Land Rovers, oh, that’s right, we were driving along and the Land Rover that I was in started, like we're doing about 30, 40 ks an hour, started [car spluttering noises] and I said to Brett Swan, the Aussie that was at Hatulia, driving us, he was doing the shuttle service. I said, "mate, Jesus, what's wrong?" He said, "I don’t know."

Anyway, it's like bloody Keystone Cops, cough, farting, and the blokes up the back of the convoy, the other three vehicles, "Jesus, what are you guys doing?" We weren’t going to stop and get out and give it a service. So, we're going past and all these militia were all sitting around or lying outside their headquarters drinking beer and isn't it fun, massacring and raping and pillaging and all this. Bastards.

And as they went past because they hadn't been told. It was classic. They went, "Bloody UN.", you know, they all started trying to get back on the back of their stupid trucks and then they chased us. So, they came in behind us and meanwhile, we’re farting our way to the airport, and it was just over the bridge and down the road to the airport.

And when we got in and then they stopped because there was Australian soldiers and I know who they were, they were 2 Squadron, SAS, because I walked up to, they were all standing around the perimeter of the airfield. They had pistols, they didn't have long rifles, right, didn't have their weapons but they all had a box and that's where, the box, they weren't allowed to be obviously armed apart from personal weapons.

So went through and got out of the car and I said to Brett, "What’s the bloody problem." We never found out until we got back to Darwin. What had happened was the three other vehicles in the convoy were from Dili, the supply of vehicles in Dili. Ours was from, it was his vehicle from Hatulia. It was the dry season, where in the mountains the dust was like bull dust.

Over the whole time we were there, we got them serviced about once every month or so but over the time it was there all this bull dust got into the air filter, in the dry season it was no problem, came down to Dili, the humidity was about 90 per cent. The humidity got into the bull dust in the air filter, clogged it up. So, ripped off the air filter problem solved.

Anyway, we got through and then we had to go through customs at Dili airport. Meanwhile, Dili’s burning. It's a nightmare. We had to go through, we had a little bag, open it up, like they had to show, the press were there, had to show one handkerchief, a pair of thongs and a shaving brush. Anyway, then we got on the plane. It was a RAAF C-130, I think it was.

So, we got on, but on the way over to the rear ramp I went over to one of the soldiers and I said, "Who are you guys?" He said, "I'm just here to make sure everything's okay". I said, "You’re Regiment, aren’t you?" He said, "No, not really." I said, "Mate, I was 2 Squadron in Vietnam." And the bloke said, excuse the French, "Mate, you’re too old for this shit, I tell you." And I said, "I know, I know. I'm too old" and he tells me, he said, "You look like shit." and people kept telling me this and I'm starting to believe it.

Anyway, we got on and guess who was already on the plane. Sitting, right? Have you ever been on a C-130? There's, you come up the back ramp, I used to jump out of them in the Regiment, but you come up the back ramp and there's a row of seats outward facing in the middle and then there’s seats along each side. Right up the front, underneath, there's a little, couple of steps and you get up into the cockpit where the pilots are.

Right underneath, right at the first seats were the team of Malaysian coppers. They had found the Malaysian police shirts and put them back on again and somehow, not in our convoy, they abandoned us back at Gleno, they had found their way out by talk, talk, talking to militia and TNI, all their little buddies and they got on, first on the plane. Morrow was going to kill them. I said, "Mate, probably not a good look. There's too many witnesses. They'll get there just dessert."

So, anyway, we got on and he was seething. Then we took off because militia, this Regiment guy said, "Mate, there’s militia everywhere. They're all over the place." The airport was surrounded by grass and bushy stuff and apparently there was, when they flew in they could see the bastards hiding in whatever.

They didn't fire, as far as I know, they didn't fire because they didn't dare at these planes coming and taking off. So, when we took off, one of the final scenes was, we took off, apparently there was a Kangaroo operation, one of those Kangaroo exercises in Darwin. Nicely timed because INTERFET was going in at the end of September or something.

As we took off, two, I think they were Singaporean, fighters came each side of our, as each plane took off there was a bit of a ritual. Apparently, they were doing exercises out over the Arafura Sea or whatever it was but as each UN plane was coming in and taking off because of the threat from militia, possible, because you shoot a plane down, a lot of people die.

They’d come in and just shepherd on each of the wings and I looked at Morrow and I said, "Mate", the sounds of choppers took me back to Vietnam. When I flew into Vietnam 30 years before this, we flew into Saigon, the war was going on big time, two F-4, American F-4 Phantoms came and shepherded the Qantas 707 plane on the way in.

Now we're flying out and we're shepherded by two fighter planes. I think they were Singaporean. And I said, "The parallels between here and Vietnam are chilling, because we left Vietnam, and we left the war, and we all know what happened there. We said we'd stay in Timor and we’re leaving." Not happy, yeah, not happy. None of us were happy. We're all pissed off that we were ordered out.

Evacuation to Darwin

We got into, flew into Darwin airport, I think it was nighttime when we landed and right at the foot of the plane, when they let the ramp down was the Deputy Commissioner of the AFP, Adrian Whiddet, who knew me really quite well, and knew that I had quite a fair bit to do with the decision not to go with weapons.

And he said, "Jesus", he said it again, another person, he said, "Jesus, Barney, Morrow, you look like shit. And you smell." And I said, "Jesus, Adrian, I'm getting a complex here." And he said, "Mate, I’m flying back to Canberra tonight, before I go …" and go over there, there's like CWA ladies there like when they got evacuated at Dunkirk, there was sandwiches and a cup of tea. Go over there. "Before you go over there." he said, "I'm flying back tonight, Mick Palmer and John Howard want to know, was it a good idea?"

And I knew what he meant, was it a good idea to go without weapons? And I said, "Mate, you wouldn't be talking to us now. There were so many instances that if we had have gone armed with a pistol, the world would have known that police were armed, it was only a police operation.

Police were armed but I said, "I know my weapon handling skills and most of the police in the AFP contingent, were pretty proficient with weapons." But I said, "We’re working with the Indians, Pakis, Nigerians, all this. I don't know, a lot of them had probably never seen a gun and what? Would they give them a five-hour course or something." And I said, "If we're in a confrontational situation, and we were armed and the world knew we were armed, and somebody panicked or went for a handkerchief.

They could have shot us and said they went for their weapons. Sorry." You know, "But if the world knows we’re not, we’ll still be dead, but they aren't going to get away with that. What are you going to get out of your pocket if you’re unarmed, a handkerchief?" So, he said, "That's all I need to know." He said, "Look after yourself. I'll be flying back up to Darwin in a couple of days’ time."

So we staggered over to the gorgeous CWA ladies and they looked at us as if we were something from Mars, and wolfing sandwiches down and bloody, the, there was little things of orange juice on the C-130 coming over, and grapes or something, but we were starving. Anyway, we ate that. Then were bused to Larrakeyah Barracks in Darwin. That was our first night. We had nothing with us.

So, we had a quite a fitful night. I didn't sleep. I don’t think Morrow slept, really. So, and then the AFP gave us $200 because they knew most of us didn't have a lot of, most of our stuff had been pinched, burnt, whatever. So, they bussed us into Darwin and we're in dirty uniforms then we had a shower that night and we stood under the shower for about three, four hours, just, like, hot water.

Flush toilets, because we just had a hole in the ground up at Gleno, I mean, yeah, and cold baths with a bloody plastic jug and so went into town. Morrow and I went into Woollies or something and we had all of this money. So, I bought couple pairs of shorts. I bought a pair of boat shoes, leather boat shoes, which I've still got. But when I got back to the, we went to a hotel, then when we got back to the hotel, Morrow said, "Do you know where these beaches are made Barney?" He said, "Indonesia."

And then he threw them out the window. And we bought a couple of T shirts and whatever, but I bought some shaving gear and because my mind was like, we were just a bit out of it, I’d bought two of those aerosol things of underarm instead of one underarm and one shaving cream, and then we got back to Larrakeyah Barracks, you know, and got our stuff and I was in there and spurting the stuff.

I had another long shower. I said, "Morrow. This stuff’s crap." "Underarm, mate. You’re squirting underarm. No wonder it’s not foaming up." Anyway, one night at Larrakeyah, then they put us in the Travel Lodge. I remember, and there was a few, quite a few police there, probably 10 or 20. But they’d overbooked for the Japanese tour group. So, who'd they kick out? Us! So, we're out on the pavement again with our little packs, like, "Hello, what are we gonna do here?"

Warren Snowden, who I knew well from working for Bob Hawke, he saw Morrow and I, we went and got a coffee somewhere and sat down, and it was his electorate, and he came over, he said, "Jesus, Barney, you look like shit." I’ve had a hundred people have said that and I was really starting to get worried. Anyway, I’d shaved this stage and he said, "So we heard about it. Geez. How was it?"

Had a bit of a coffee and a bit of breakfast, he said, "Where are you staying?" We said, "Well we were staying up there but now we're out here. They kicked us out because they overbooked." So, anyway, he saw the police, they'd sent a police team up from Canberra to deal with all the admin stuff, you know, putting people here, there and everywhere, they're running out of rooms, like hotel rooms. I don't know what was on in Darwin, obviously something was on, there was no rooms.

But as luck would have it, walking down the main street of, with a pair of footy shorts and a T shirt and our pack, our little pack, full now with our police clothes all rolled up, washed at Larrakeyah but dirty, dusty boots, I ran into Ingrid Hayden. She had been evacuated out with Sergio de Mello, but they were staying at whatever the ritzy ritzy hotel in Darwin is, the Continental or something. She was in a bloody suite up the top and she said, chat chat chat, caught up and because I knew her and her sister Georgia really well, and she said, "Where are you?" and I said, "Well, nowhere at the moment. We’re waiting to get notified if we can go somewhere because all the places are all full up."

She said, "Come up and stay with me." So, I said, "Morrow?" She said, "No, no. Bring him up. I'll get two rollaways." So, we stayed in her suite, you know, it was like, it was as big as this room, like, and we just had stuff so we gave her, and as a thank you, I had nothing, I gave her my, the police shirt that I had.

I get a Christmas card from the Hayden's every year, Bill and Dallas, and they always say the kids too, and she said, years ago now, she said, "I've still got that police shirt" because then she went back to New York and I don't think she was with Sergio de Mello when he was killed in Baghdad.

But, yeah, so she's still got that police shirt. But anyway, we spent about a week or ten days in Darwin. We all got medicals. We all had, most of us had worms. I was tired. I was diagnosed with typhoid and dengue. A bloke called Max Knopf had cerebral malaria, he could have died.

There was no facility back up in East Timor when were there. The UN, you know, had a couple of dispirin. I had Dengue, like, hope you never get dengue. It's like the worst headache you can ever imagine. A migraine on steroids. We just spent a day, a whole week of drinking and carrying on. I arranged with the Chief Medical Officer, and I said, "Mate, massages." I said, "Could you get the permissions?

There's a really good massage place down around the waterfront in Darwin." I said, "All these guys and you've seen them all" because they brought a psych up and I couldn't talk to the psych. Morrow couldn't talk to the psych. We were just too wired, and she didn't push the right buttons and I knew Sonya reallywell from Whitsett days. And I said, "Sorry, Sonya, nothing against you but I just can't talk about this. It's too raw".

So, I said, "How about springing for two messages for everybody that's in Darwin?" He said, "Really good idea." So, he set up an account at this massage place. I told people, through the grapevine they got told. Went down and had two massages, you know, and we got food, we got fed, so that was pretty good but then the new contingent came in that was going to replace us and they were held back because the situation was getting worse. And then in that intervening period, then INTERFET went in, so they went in with INTERFET.

The last of our guys come about the 12th of September, I think. I think INTERFET, I don't know, you can do the, fifteenth, seventeenth of September just before we got taken to our respective Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, whatever. We had a big briefing. The purpose was, we were going to brief the new coppers going over as to what it was like and it came around to my turn, and I got up and the Commissioner was there, Mick Palmer. I got up. I started to cry, and I started talking and I just broke down.

I cried and a bloke I joined the police force with, a navy bloke during Vietnam, he was like really worried because he said, "Mate, I've seen you a lot and I've never seen you like this." I was just a mess. So, they diagnosed me with typhoid, dengue and worms, whatever, gave us all these bombs but they let me go on the plane back to Canberra and then I went to the international health people in Canberra and got all small blood tests and she said, "You've got typhoid, we're going to quarantine you."

And I’d just sort of driven in that day for a quick medical thinking I’d have a bit of a chat and she put me on quarantine, at Woden Valley Hospital. But before that, this part of the story I like front page, you know, Australian police evacuated out of Darwin, did this ,did that, and she said, "I just read the paper." She said, "I've seen what you guys did." Well, that was the button, being told what we did was good. That was the button. I just broke down. I didn't, couldn't leave her office to go to quarantine for four and a half hours, so she put me in a side office and I was just a mess. So, I had some psych stuff. It was just shit, but it was good.

Return to Timor Leste

A mate of mine from the regiment came over. He had a book fair or something. I was in Vietnam with him and I had coffee in Manuka and something happened, we talked about and I just broke down crying again. He said, "Mate," he said, "Jesus Christ."

He said, "You've been," and I always remember his words, "You've been to the well of courage too often." And he said, "Mate the effing well is dry. Don't, don’t go back, ever." Because they asked me to go back about two years after that and I said, "No." I was out there and I was out again, then I went and worked in Parliament House for a while. I couldn't go.

It was just, some of our guys did go back for a bit of closure to see how it had progressed but the best thing we did, and I don't know if you want to have this on the interview, but in 2019, five of us that were in, on that contingent, went back to Timor for the 20th anniversary of the poll, and the independence vote and we went back and we were all anxious, because again, we had told the Timorese and believed it, that we would stay even and, "We will try and help you and protect you.

Even if it goes to custard." Well, we ended up not being able to do that, we were taken out. So, we went back and we were all, I was just, we're in Sydney, we flew up from Canberra, stayed overnight Sydney at the airport and then we flew out the next morning. I saw all the guys, the five, having breakfast and I said, "Guys, I don't think I’ll go."

It cost $2,000 in airfares to fly to Timor, via Darwin. It was quite expensive. I was going to pull out. I said, "I don't think I could do this" and Dave Savage, who you've probably heard about, he said, because I didn't sleep, I was having dreams all night and he was similar, but we were talked into going by the other three and we did go. So, we, overnight and then we flew over to Timor and we're on a civvy flight.

We pulled up and the hostess got everybody else off, there was five of us, everybody else off the plane. We said, "What’s going on?" And one of us looked out the window to the terminal and there was all these Timorese schoolkids lined up and officials, and we walked off and they just, you know, they were happy to see us. Not unhappy. They were just like, you know, and we spent two weeks there.

It was just, it was just gorgeous. And I'm on tape saying, "20 years ago gunfire and screams, now music and laughter." It was just, it was just, it was really good. Went to my village, just an aside to that, there's always stories. I work at the War Memorial as you know and I got a whole heap of photos blown up to A4 size of people's faces from Ermera and Gleno, I took them over, thinking when I was going back, thinking I might be able to find out what happened.

So, we were accompanied by an SBS film crew and our story is told on Dateline or Insight, one or the other. Anyway, they stayed with us in Dili, and they knew I was going back to Gleno that day, because that was my village. So, they came with us and they were filming in the back of their vehicle going up and as we went through past where that bastard of a roadblock was and little bridge going into Gleno, the TNI barracks then is now the police station.

They had rebuilt most of Gleno, we pulled in, unannounced, didn't have an,y and I had these photos, and the film crew was following me in and I went up to the site, there was a sergeant of East Timor police, not Indonesian, East Timor and I went up and through the interpreter there, I told him the story and I said, "I'm here, because I was here 20 years ago, during the troubles and the vote."

So, he just went, blah, blah, blah and before we knew it, I was surrounded by East Timorese police, all looking at me and it’s all being filmed and then, I can't remember that guy's name, it's on the dateline show, Insight, he was asking me questions and I had all these photos laid out on the big table and one of the police women there, this amazing thing happens, one of the little police women came over, she's looking over my shoulder, I'm being filmed looking at and she's looking.

That was her as a 14-year-old girl and the young teenage boy beside her, ended up being, she ended up marrying and she's now a police officer. So, this was all on and then, I was telling, I wish I could remember, I’m having a senior moment, this SBS guy, the journo about that rape incident and some of the murders and she was just standing there crying and nodding, you know, she said, "I know. I saw it." She was there. She lived it. Her parents were killed. Unbelievable. It's unbelievable.