Many young Malaysians passed through Melbourne during my four and a half years in Monash, and after. Additional batches of Colombo Plan scholars, joined later by JPA and MARA students, arrived to add to a thriving community of Malaysian students in this second largest and most livable of Australian cities. Before the entry of my batch, there was already a large company of government and private scholars in Melbourne, many staying on after completion of their studies, especially those doing their chartered accountancy courses or law, and mature government servants sent to do architecture and town planning. There were also a few scions of titled government officers, the wealthier families and politicians who were sent to undertake early secondary education in Victoria’s fine grammar schools, such as Melbourne and Geelong Grammar, and Ellie Smith for girls.
These assorted Malaysian expatriates together with their families and the younger cohorts coalesced, as happened in other centres of learning in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and later in the 70s and 80s in greater numbers in the United States, to form formal associations or informal groupings defined by common residence to provide mutual support, social sustenance and cultural amenity away from home. Besides home visits especially to older members with families, or groups of students who rented private homes, the students would get together during festivals, birthdays, or went to picnics, cook-outs (or “barbies” for barbeques as they are popularly called in Australia) and other outings, and golf or the several international day activities on various campuses around Melbourne. Such associations and interaction outside their respective academic activities helped create networks of friendship and mutual interest that were to remain well after they all returned home to Malaysia after completion of their studies.
The focal point of students outside the classroom in Melbourne, both for private or government scholars, was the Malaysian-Singapore Student Association, and the Malay Society of Victoria (MSV). There was also the Chung Ling Old Boys Association. Additional student societies also existed on the larger campuses in and around the city including besides Monash, the University of Melbourne, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, the newly established Latrobe University, Caulfield Tech (later to merge with Monash), Swinburne Tech, and Deakin University; the latter two established branch campuses later in Sarawak, Malaysia.
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| Melbourne CBD: Flinders Street station and the famous trams |
The Malay Society of Victoria was founded by a group of older Melbournites led by Kassim, a chartered accountant who later established the Kassim-Chan accounting firm. It had as pioneering members Cik Suleiman, an accountant and Australian permanent resident and his wife Kak Azizah, Darwis Daik, who later headed MIDF back home, and Baharom Baba, who after graduation and much golf joined the Commonwealth of Australia Statistical Office. Among the scholars were medical students led by Hussein Awang, who established Tawakkal Hospital in the 90s later to be absorbed into the KPJ Hospital Group, his cousin Abu Bakar Suleiman, who later rose to become the Director General of Health and on his mandatory retirement I appointed as President of the International Medical University. And out of Monash University we had the medical specialists Nik Zainal (who died prematurely in a car crash after returning home to Malaysia and working for some time in Tawakkal) and a first class medical scholar Mariam Manaf, who was lost to Malaysia when she migrated to the US with her husband. In the commerce stream were Tajol Rosli, son of the Perak Menteri Besar (Chief Minister) Ghazali Jawi, who himself later was to become a minister in Dr. Mahathir’s cabinet and ended up as Menteri Besar of the state himself; Murad Hassan, son of the Johore Menteri Besar; the Wahi brothers, Razali the architect and Ramli, and Kamarul Ariffin, the Shell scholar and lawyer. Among the senior government officers who came later were Zainuddin, later to become Director General of the Town and Country Planning Dept. who was to lead the team that was charged with the planning, design and building of Putrajaya, the nation’s new administrative capital, and Wan Mokhtar and his wife Cik Wan Teh , later to head in succession the town and country planning department in Perak, when I was asked by the then Regent of Perak Raja Nazrin to undertake the long-term economic plan for the state. And then, there was Sanad Said, who was the President of the Malay Society when I arrived in Melbourne. Coming with his wife Kak Salmah, he was sent to study architecture but joining politics later rose to become the Deputy Menteri Besar of Selangor state.
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| Aerial photo of a typical Melbourne suburb |
This “Melbourne Mafia” expanded still later through new cohorts that arrived in the fair city with me and after me. It is not entirely accurate to name this expatriate community a mafia, unlike the real mafia or the “Berkeley Mafia”, a group of accomplished and highly trained technocrats from that university that had advised President Suharto during the decade of the New Order in Indonesia just the year before we arrived in Australia. It had not any agenda or code of conduct, but just a group of scholars over the years who obtained an education that had prepared them for their responsibilities when they returned home with their qualifications. What they achieved were a product of their own talent and effort, and not due to a programme defined by their co-location. But to an extent we were the product of a programme, the Colombo Plan or the MARA-sponsored part, and there developed continuous ties between some of the members of the Melbourne community when they returned home, such as the Monash crowd. In that sense the old school tie, just like the Old Puteras of RMC, provided much more stronger links among the alumni beyond their post-training experience for many years even decades after that, more than just by being in the same city to study. Nonetheless, for a brief shining moment the “Melbourne Mafia” was a community to remember.
My own cohort provided a fresh injection to this community of Malaysians in Melbourne. Later cohorts included Abdul Ghani Osman who came to Latrobe the year after me, and later returned with an economics degree from Queensland University and became Dean of University of Malaya Economics Faculty; still later in the late 80’s having joined politics earlier to become a minister in Mahathir’s cabinet and then Menteri Besar of Johore State. He married his university mate Jamillah who also went on to become an accomplished academic in her own right. Along the same lines, Mustafa Muhamed came five years after us and returned with a first class honours degree in economics from Melbourne Uni, and went on to become another minister in the same Cabinet. After Hussein Awang, Abu Bakar Suleiman, Nik Zainal, and Mustafa Embong from my Colombo Plan batch, who achieved much as a world renowned endocrinologist, there also followed a distinguished line of doctors and surgeons, including Hussein’s brother Yahya Awang, Razali Watooth, Khalid Kadir, his wife Betty and a few others.
In other fields, there was Michael Yeoh who managed in the early 90s to persuade Monash to establish a campus in Kuala Lumpur, himself going on to head ASLI; then followed a line of scholars such as Wan Zawawi, who came the year after me, who studied under Professor Michael Swift and became himself an accomplished anthropology professor, first joining me in USM and later University of Malaya – he also was on the Monash soccer team with me, and is still today an accomplished and recorded troubadour; Khasnor Johan and Lee Kam Hing, both historians, the former completing her doctorate but returned to marry Harry Crouch and remained a Malaysian expatriate academic in Australia, while Kam Hing became a professsor in MU; after them came Shamsul Amri, who also studied under Michael Swift, and returned to UKM, after a successful teaching and research career was appointed one of the first three nationally-acclaimed distinguished professors; similarly was the career path of Wan Hashim Wan Teh, another sociologist; Yahya Ismail the Malay literary critic, and returned to lecture in USM, all of whom came after I left Monash; Wan Halim, my junior in RMC who also studied under Michael Swift and joined USM on his return and eventually became dean of social science; another junior Nik Muhammed returned to Malaysia to rise and head Sime Darby, the Malaysian conglomerate; and Aminah Pit, Miskiah and Rosnah, the “three sisters” who came to Monash two years afters my batch. Aminah became a top civil servant together with her fellow student and husband Abdullah; Miskiah rose to become Chief Librarian of the National University of Malaysia (UKM) , and later after retirement assumed the same post in the International Medical University; and Rosnah (Rose), who joined the private sector and achieved recognition as a top human capital practitioner and consultant. Miskiah married another Monash student, Sharir, a brilliant mathematician who went on to become Deputy Vice Chancellor of UKM. To this coterie, I would add Kadir Din, a specialist in the geography of tourism, now in University Utara Malaysia, and Mohamed Tap, who joined the civil service, and eventually became the secretary general of Ministry of Rural and National Development, and retired as the second director of the National Integrity Institute.
In my second year at Monash I was persuaded by Sanad to stand for election and to take over as President of the Malay Society. I held on to this post for two years, and in 1969 after the trauma of the May 13th Incident, Tajol Rosli succeeded me. At that time a Malaysian Student Director (MSD) was appointed by the Malaysian Government for the first time to look after the welfare and needs of Malaysian scolarship students overseas. Many such offices were established later all over the world where Malaysian students were present in large numbers. The time I was in Melbourne we had Encik Ismail as our MSD. Much of the Society’s activities were to organize gatherings especially during festivals like Hari Raya and Chinese New Year, trips such as to the Dandenongs, even outside Melbourne to Phillips Island to see the penguins. The society also established a cultural dance troupe, which had Zulkifli, Fawziah, Maria, Daud, Jo and me as troopers, while Wan Zawawi provided the vocal interludes on his guitar, to perform in various civic events around Melbourne, including international day in the various universities. We even undertook a performance of Mahsuri in the Alexander Theatre on the Monash campus to showcase Malay culture at the 1967 International Day. Malaysia Hall on Burke Street became the focal point of meetings and other events, shared with other associations such as the MSSA and the Chung Ling Old Boys.
It was not a difficult task to lead the Malay Society amidst my studies, most group activities being privately self-organized anyway. And, in those times, there were not any political agenda or cause to fight for, unlike as in the UK and the later campus Islamic student movement elsewhere overseas. But Wan Halim with the patronage of Michael Swift did manage to organize the Monash Islamic Society, which undertook to arrange for Friday prayers at the Religious Centre on campus.
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| A view of Melbourne CBD and its western and southeastern suburb |
I did not take up a job in the first summer break, but learned golf instead from Baharom. We were later to provide the reception committee to welcome the next batch of Colombo Plan scholars to arrive in late summer, which included Wan Zawawi, Wan Halim, Ghani Osman, Naburi and Jamillah among others. I did take up a job in the second summer holidays, working as a station attendant in Richmond on the Dandenong line, which afforded me to purchase a hi-fi set (one of those magnetic tape unit type!). It was sometime during the second summer that my gang played host to Musa Hitam, executive secretary of UMNO, later to become the Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister in the Mahathir administration, when he visited Melbourne. We took him around to Wan Zawawi’s favourite haunts in St. Kilda, using the massive collectively-bought second hand Holden organized by Naburi, who later became active in UMNO politics and appointed a local councillor on Ipoh Municipal Hall. Later in 1971 after I had left Monash for the States, Dr. Mahathir, at the time having been expelled from UMNO together with Musa Hitam, and finding himself out in the political wilderness, also visited Monash.
Two weeks before the start of the 1968 academic year, my third honours year, Jo returned from the UK to join me in the compulsory geography class field trip to Gippsland. On our return from that rather enjoyable mission, I rejoined Wan Halim and company in Mrs Ball’s house on Florence Street just a walking distance behind and south of the Monash campus, rented by Fawziah, in an informal reception for the third batch of students, this time mainly sponsored by MARA and the JPA, which included the “three sisters” of Aminah, Miskiah and Rosnah. That was the first time I met Rosnah, who later was to say that I was rather aloof and “sombong” (haughty) at that first encounter. Mrs Ball’s bungalow, she named it Linga Longga, became the focal point of our immediate and subsequent batches of Malaysian students in Monash, extending many years afterwards until the death of her husband and she finally moved to the beach. And in that academic year, which was to become her last year in Monash, Jo joined her friend Jennie in a rented house in Glenhuntly on the Frankston line, some distance from the campus on Northern Road.
It was overall an easy collective life in Malbourne that did not distract us from our studies. Except for two occasions. The first occasion was the debate over the separation of the MSSA into the Malaysian Student Association (MSA) and the Singapore Student Association in 1967. Eventually this was accomplished through negotiations with the Singapore group, which had in 1965 elected to remain in the MSSA even after Singapore left Malaysia, a delayed trigger for the inevitable split. It was not an easy parting, because of the politics back home, but reluctantly accepted as a fait accompli. The Malaysian side was led by Eddie Cheah, the MSSA President and I as the MSV president. As it turned out the MSA subsequently lapsed into inactivity as many of its functions were taken over by a newly formed Monash Malaysian Student Association, and other student groupings in the other campuses in Melbourne.
The second was the May 13th Incident in 1969; we only managed to get more news of it through newspapers a couple of days later, though there were also private communications. Unfortunately, there was no internet then. The amazing thing about the incident was the coming closer of the Malaysian students on campus. The tragedy brought all round sadness, and the reactions surprisingly muted. A group of us in Monash put out a small pamphlet on the occasion, in which I wrote an article, “Malaysian, I presume?”, and Wan Halim penned a poem entitled, “Let the River be Muddy again”, together with several other spontaneous contributions from John Funstan and Wan Zawawi, with a foreword by Michael Swift. It was distributed amongst the students on campus and many other Australian sympathizers.
In spite of the changing political climate at home, and its later spread to the various Malaysian student communities in overseas campuses throughout the world in the 90s, student life in Melbourne in those days remained calm and amenable, whatever the politics and other social disruptions. Munira and her Singaporean best friend Phaik Sim, still remained best friends to this day, as with my memories of Khor (and his beat-up Fiat, which I often borrow) and Eddie Cheah and Michael Yeoh. Life still has to go on.
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