By Phil Jarratt
I watched the recent ABC Foreign Correspondent report on how Covid has changed Bali (The Year Bali Tourism Stopped, March 9) with great interest but with the scepticism of one who has experienced the changing fates of the “Island of the Gods” for nearly 50 years.
While I thought one-man band reporter and filmer Matt Davis did a commendable job, all inside half an hour, of outlining the tyranny of mass tourism and the resilient spirit of the Balinese who were using the time-out to clean up their island, there is so much more to the story, so much about the Covid response that is uplifting and optimistic, and so much more that the Indonesian government won’t be revealing any time soon. And, of course, tourism has been stopped in its tracks many times in the half century since the international airport opened, for volcanic eruptions, terrorist attacks and pandemics, amongst other curses.
I haven’t been in Bali since August 2019, my longest period away since I started visiting in 1974, at the start of what was to become a lifelong obsession with the place and its people, with countless trips, sometimes several a year, over the decades. In 2013-14 I spent more time in Bali than in Noosa and wrote a book about its cultural history, and at that time I knew more about the economic, social and cultural impacts of tourism than I ever had previously. But 18 months is a long time away from a place where a hotel can rise up on a rice paddy in a matter of weeks, so in an effort to get past the fleshpots of Kuta and the hipster cafs of Canggu and get a feeling for what is really going on, I sent smoke signals out into the villages and asked three of the wisest expats I know for their take.
Many of you will remember Johnny Blundstone, the junior member of this trio of elders, from his days as Noosa’s best maitre d’, a fixture at all the best dining rooms of Hastings Street and Quamby Place. More than a decade ago, Johnny stumbled onto a mountain-top in Bali and, with wife Cath and son Huey, created Bali Eco Stay, for me now a familiar haven of peace, tranquillity and wonderful food.
In response to my question, how has Covid changed Bali for you, he wrote: “We closed from March to July last year but managed to keep all the full-time staff on, one week on and one off, which seems to be working, but the Balinese will never tell you what’s really going on with them and if everything is okay. We have had very few guests since reopening so there is an abundance of food in the gardens and rice paddies, and we have been able to keep the village in some food. Most Balinese families in these remote villages grow their own food, with plenty of fruit trees and rice.
“The Balinese in the tourist and urban areas have suffered more, but the banjar system #40;village council #41; here works so well that they look after their own. It’s the Indonesian workers from other islands that are hurting the most, with no local support system. Many NGOs are doing their best to look after this group, but unfortunately some fall through the cracks.
“Who knows what the future holds, but many are hoping for a reset on this magical island, away from mass tourism with more emphasis on the cultural and spiritual aspects of Balinese life, which sounds great but will it fill the void that mass tourism has left behind?”
Next I asked the US-born sculptor and writer Diana Darling, who has lived in Bali since 1980 and whose novel The Painted Alphabet is my favourite Bali book. Although she is a celebrity in Bali, Diana lives a simple life in a village compound in Ubud with husband Agung.
She wrote: “It’s empty, of course, but everyone knows that; and we are living on our diminishing savings — but everyone else is running out of money, too. And that is exactly what has changed in Bali for nearly everybody, and nobody is used to it.
“Bali has been growing steadily more prosperous for the past 50 years. Not even terrorist bombs could stop the flow of tourists. But now it’s been a year since international borders closed and people have lost their incomes, and some might never get it back. It’s especially bad in Ubud.
“Fifty years ago, people without cash could live from their land. But it’s precisely the people who staked everything on tourism that have lost their land. Some foreigners say that Bali should have known better than to place all its eggs in a fragile basket like tourism. I say that the government, from the top to the bottom, should have known better. Unlike the people of Nusa Lembongan, the people of Ubud don’t have seaweed growing nearby. Their main skill is making people happy.
“For me privately, the onset of the pandemic was such a big unknown that I gave up cigarettes and spirits for fear that I’d run out. You don’t want to face the end of the world craving stuff you can’t get.”
Arthur Karvan, who has known the island longer than any of us, and whose eponymous Sydney nightclub Arthur’s was a favoured haunt for many years, back when nightclubs were more my thing, has the last word. A practising Buddhist and a cultural sponge, he is chiefly famous these days as Claudia Karvan’s dad, but for me no trip to Bali is complete without a leisurely lunch spiced with Arthur’s invigorating worldview.
He wrote: “Bali for me has changed for the better, or should I say it’s changed back to how it once was, more like the place I once knew back in 1968 when I first came here, offering culture, a life without drudgery, the weather and the smell and feeling and ways of the Orient.
“The maelstrom is much more nuanced than the down-on-its-knees image the Australian press writes about. The rush to judgement is awful. The zeitgeist that Bali has always known is alive and well. One is looking at, talking to and seeing Balinese having a go, which is a change from seeing foreigners at the helm. And it’s less transactional too, as there is a much greater understanding of the needs of others. The hot button issues of equality are now quite an insistent voice – the Indonesians want Bali back.
“I know this because once again you can get around as the traffic chaos isn’t here anymore. Pre-Covid I was hardly going anywhere due to the tourist invasion. Bali is much more viable than the olden days without tourists because now there is modern technology, and this makes it a dream environment to live in. It’s not urban but has all the facilities of city existence.
“The thrills and spills of pre-Covid have been replaced by a communal sense of responsibility. Everyone obeys, there isn’t any whinging, they just do it for the higher good of all. There is no Jobkeeper or Jobseeker to get them through – they wear masks, obey the nightly curfew and incessantly wash their hands, accepting their lot and praying it will one day improve.
“Bali has become more pervasively Balinese than touristy, they have been relieved of the FOMA curse (fear of missing out), they are keeping their eye on the main prize and they don’t want to be conscripted to again just be working for the man. Their innate gifts and talents will be revisited, revived and reworked. Faith in all things has been strengthened, there is less de-sensitising of their spiritual nature.
“There is no ennui to cause me to give up, quite the contrary. One day I again hope to see not just beautiful eyes above face masks but the whole of those gorgeous smiling faces.”
