Our Central Committee of Indonesian Independence Exhibition contains images of the two publications undertaken by the Central Committee of Indonesian Independence formed at the Trades Hall on Wickham Terrace in Brisbane in 1946.

It was this Committee that negotiated the “Return of the Exiles” (Bennett) with the Australian Government.  In no small part, it was the efforts of Mohamad Bondan and his Australian-born wife, Molly, and so this collection includes a tribute to them.

The two pamphlets published in Brisbane by the Central Committee of Indonesian Independence in 1946 are:

Publication 1 - Central Committee of Indonesian Independence, Australia 1946, Republic of Indonesia, Brisbane.
Publication 2   - Central Committee of Indonesian Independence, Australia 1946, Merdeka: Republic Indonesia, 17 August, 1945-17 August, 1946, Brisbane.

They are housed in the Fryer Library, the rare books and documents section of the University of Queensland Library.  The permission of the Fryer Library to publish this priceless material, and imaging of it, is gratefully acknowledged.

Publication 1 - Central Committee of Indonesian Independence, Australia 1946, Republic of Indonesia, Brisbane.
Publication 2 - Central Committee of Indonesian Independence, Australia 1946, Merdeka: Republic Indonesia, 17 August, 1945-17 August, 1946, Brisbane.
Tribute to Mohamad and Molly Bondan

This photograph of the “gentlest of revolutionaries”, as JD Legge called him, was taken sometime during Mohamad Bondan’s time in Australia between 1943 and 1946. 

It is included as a tribute to the man who was Secretary of the Central Committee for Indonesian Independence in Brisbane following the Declaration of Independence in 1945.

No story of the friendship between Indonesia and Australia could or should be told without acknowledgement of vital role played by Mohamad Bondan and his Australian-born wife, Molly, in the early formative days of that friendship’s beginning.

We would like to acknowledge the generosity of Alit Bondan in allowing us to publish the photographs of his parents.