Day 2 - Visit to the Australian Embassy

Day 2 - Embassy Visit

Hi everyone,

Sorry about not getting to tell you all about our day yesterday, but the early morning get up on Wednesday morning really threw everything out.

So now back to Tuesday.  After a nice breakfast and a bit of down time we had our group meeting at 9:30am.  We have been getting together for these meetings regularly - not only just to do all of the arranging for the day, but also to think about and talk about all the things that we have seen and done. At 10:30 we headed off on our bus to the Australian embassy - with our passports, which we needed to get into the embassy.   When we arrived we were greeted with very heavy security which included a security force of about 10 - 15 security people who checked our passports, tested us for contact with bomb making materials and also scanned our belongings as well as going through a metal detector ourselves.  No bags were allowed into the embassy and unfortunately no Echidnas - so Eric had to wait on the bus for us!!!!!  Very high security, but given what has happened at this embassy in the past (bombing in ?????) you can very easily understand this level of security.  We felt very safe in the embassy, which is a very impressive place to be.  The traffic on the road was in our favour, so we were a little early.  We had to surrender our passport to be signed into the embassy - and received a visitor pass which we could trade back in for our passport at the end of our visit. 

We were escorted to a room for coffee and tea and then we were greeted by Marie Grealy  who works at the embassy.  She spoke to us a little about the embassy but was also very interested in where we came from and about our schools.  Marie told us that the Australian embassy is the largest mission abroad with about 500 staff, which includes A-based (Australian based) staff and local staff.  The ambassador is known as the HOM ( Head of Mission) and is Mr Greg Moriarty.  He spent about 40 minutes with us talking about the extremely complex work that all of the departments undertake in Indonesia.  It was really fascinating and the ambassador was extremely generous with his time and very complementary toward our trip and it's purpose.  We then had briefings from Public Relations, Cultural, Aus Aid  and Business representatives who spoke about their roles and the work that they do in Indonesia.  It became very apparent that one of the main roles of the embassy and Australia's role in Indonesia is about building capacity and ensuring that Indonesia continues to grow and to prosper.  As a close neighbour it is in our best interests for Indonesia to remain a peaceful, democratic nation.

After lunch Marie spoke to us about her role in relation to Education and it's role in Indonesia.  Another embassy staff member Donny spoke about his role with the Bridge schools, which is a program which runs matching Indonesian and Australian schools.  While we were there we were told about the announcement that was going to be made later in the afternoon about the new Australian embassy which will replace the current one.  The embassy staff were excited about this.

At the end of our visit we collected our passports and were escorted out of  the embassy.

What an absolutely amazing experience the embassy visit was and I know that we all felt very privileged to have visited the embassy and to have spent time with the HOM. 

 

Sorry that there are no pictures with this entry, but cameras (and Echidnas) were definitely not allowed into the embassy!!!!!!