The Timor Man by Kerry B. Collison Page A

Australians and yet attacked the very concept of a united Singapore and Malaysia. The two British Commonwealth states had recently formed their own Federation together, and the Australians were unsure of their best course of action.
    Defence specialists urged the government to embark on a program which would give greater access, through information collection, to enable more accurate interpretation of the mass of foreign language material made available through Australian embassies and friendly powers. The difficulty lay with the defence sector’s inability to source qualified personnel with acceptable security clearances to assist in filling the information vacuum. The decision had been made to provide immediate training in Asian languages to specific branches of the Government ranging from defence to information services.
    Coleman was surprised when he was selected for the course. He had studied journalism at college before joining the department, believing at the time that this would provide the opportunity to travel abroad. But it hadn’t. As a career it lacked the excitement his contemporaries enjoyed. Life in Canberra had been dull and, more out of boredom than any other motivation, he had applied for language training when the positions were called.
    The financial rewards were attractive also, although he believed that few of the applicants were motivated by the considerable salary increases offered. He had not stipulated Bahasa Indonesia . The selection committee, having assessed his preliminary aptitude tests, decided that Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese would be too unmanageable due to the difficulties of tonal pronunciation. He had considered their decision and decided that this course was difficult enough. Had he attempted the Thai course there was every possibility that he would already have returned to his desk in Canberra.
    The alarm sounded startling Coleman. Five o’clock! He had studied through the night without sleep. He yawned. God how his mouth tasted! His sense of smell was practically nonexistent but he knew the room stank of stale smoke and the partly demolished block of New Zealand cheddar.
    He shaved, showered, and dressed quickly. Outside it was light and Coleman left his quarters and walked briskly towards the sea where, to his relief, the tide covered the foul smelling seaweed which could, at low tide, turn even the strongest stomach. He enjoyed these early morning walks.
    Coleman reflected on how he had changed over the years. His present success continued to surprise him. He had been a shy and unconfident child! An only child, Stephen Coleman had grown up in an atmosphere filled with intelligent albeit often inebriated debate, and witty but cutting sarcasm, as both his parents were professional people who were often, to Stephen’s amusement, fiercely competitive towards each other.
    As a young child he experienced an ongoing sense of loneliness. His parents, due to the nature of their work and interests, were basically peripatetic and disliked putting down roots of any kind. They travelled extensively and the inside of his wardrobe doors were lined with post cards from the most exotic places one could imagine. He had spent his adolescent years in boarding school.
    At night, when the other boarding students were asleep, he would lie on his bed visualising these faraway places and conjure up some fantasy in his mind to carry him off to those destinations, not necessarily to be with his parents, but to escape the monotony of being a teenager ensconced in the rigid disciplines as determined by the school’s masters.
    He had been one of those children who could pass through others’ lives without being obvious, or apparently special. Not that he had really tried. In fact, although he had the ability, Stephen found the whole idea of attending boarding school relatively boring and conformed just to pass the time. He existed on the periphery of the other students’ worlds.
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