in English

The Sea

This article was published in Westerly magazine (Australia), Edition No. 62.2 (2017) The first time I saw the sea, I was five. My father took me to see the Indian Ocean. We lived in a small town near the southern coast of Java, so we refer to the ocean as the ‘South Sea’. The furious sea under the dusky and misty dawn emanated a mysterious, yet intense energy, which triggered an unprecedented sensation inside me, that I was very, very tiny and powerless before the nature. With his hand around mine, my father told me the story of the Queen of the South Sea. The beautiful goddess, always wrapped in a green dress, is a mighty spirit residing at the bottom of the sea: the one who makes this sacred sea so perilous; the one who so often takes lives. And so, fishermen, sailors, swimmers, even visitors who merely put their feet on the beach sand are carried away by under-water currents, transported to her palace at the bottom of the sea. Listening to this, I shivered. I held Father’s hand tighter. Father laughed, called me a coward. The mystical beliefs of Java somehow had become an essential part of [...]

December 6, 2019 // 6 Comments

[Kimberley Echo]: Region tantalises travel writer

An article in a local Kimberley newspaper on the fabulous Kimberley Writers Festival, Kununurra, Australia, 2-4 September 2016 Rourke Walsh Indonesian travel writer Agustinus Wibowo likes to immerse himself in the culture of a region before putting pen to paper. Having travelled extensively through Asia for his first three books, he said the “magical and exotic beauty” of the Kimberley could bring him back and feature as the subject of a future work. The writer was one of several authors and playwrights in Kununurra for the 11th annual Kimberley Writers’ Festival at the weekend. Wibowo’s travels include hitchhiking his way across Asia for 18 months on a shoestring budget of $US2000 before spending more than a year living in war-torn Afghanistan. He said before the weekend, he knew little of the Kimberley, despite its relative closeness to his homeland. “The Kimberley is so close to Indonesia, it’s actually closer than it is to Perth,” he said. “The landscape is fabulous and for me there is a magical and exotic beauty about it.” Wibowo said while this was unfortunately just a flying visit before jetting back to Jakarta for other commitments, the Kimberley had left a lasting impression on him. “I [...]

September 30, 2016 // 3 Comments

[GIV]: The Knowmad’s Journey Along Indonesia’s Eastern Border

Global Indonesian Voices Posted On 01 Dec 2015 By : Tony Sugiarta and Jennifer Sidharta For the locals, the Indonesia-Papua New Guinea border is so vague that they could not differentiate which part belongs to which country. Here is a story from Indonesian travel writer and photographer Agustinus Wibowo, who have spent a significant amount of time at the border area. Students at Tais, a coastal village located at Papua New Guinea’s Western Province. (Photo source: Agustinus Wibowo) Perspective Singapore, GIVnews.com – At one point of our life, we all question our identity. Agustinus Wibowo takes it a step further, as he makes it his quest. Many who are familiar with his works will agree that they are hardly classified as the typical travel writings like Lonely Planet guidebooks or reviews of glamourous hotels and establishments. Instead, Agustinus travels to contemplate intrapersonal conflicts and writes about them, taking readers along to experience his physical and mental tribulations. No doubt, he is a great storyteller and in Singapore, GIV had the privilege to sit down and listen to his adventure in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia’s closest, yet the furthest, neighbour. “So how can they survive? So this is the reason of the anger. [...]

December 1, 2015 // 0 Comments

Adventurer Agustinus Wibowo: A journey home

By Rory Howard China.org.cn, May 8, 2015 Agustinus Wibowo is a Chinese-Indonesian author. At first glance, he seems more like a traveler than an adventurer and more like a happy conversationalist than a philosopher. But just as my first impression of him is challenged by what I learn of him in our conversation, so too do we find in his latest book, “Ground Zero: When the Journey Takes You Home,” that his sense of self has been tested by his upbringing, his culture and his travels. Danger, charity, humanity Wibowo’s first two books – “A Blanket of Dust” and “Borderlines: A Journey to Central Asia” – tell of his earlier travels through Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. When asked what took him to these places, he answers that his journeys were governed by chance. “I wanted to be a journalist, but I didn’t have a background in journalism. The road itself is the best university,” he says. His journey began in China, the “land of his ancestors,” where he studied computer engineering for many years in Beijing before becoming disillusioned by education. He had no interest in pursuing a career in his field, so he decided he had to travel [...]

May 8, 2015 // 1 Comment