In memory of Indo Jack

Going into year 9 we had a choice: French, German or Indonesian. I chose Indonesian because I’d heard it was easier than French, and I was a bit over French, having done it in years 7 and 8 with Bernie Byers. Apparently Bernie was the first African American to become an Australian citizen. He looked a bit like Sidney Poitier and he was popular with the mums, but that’s another story.
   I’d heard a bit about Indo Jack from my two brothers. Pete, 8 years older than me, had had him for French. That was back in the days before you could do Indonesian, so his nickname in those days had been Death Breath, on account of the garlic he ate, which obviously offended the senses of his middle-class Anglo-Australian students. Pete was pretty crap at languages, so he and Death Breath hadn’t got on too well. According to Pete, he was a tough customer – you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. Chris, my other brother, 5 years older, had been one of the first batch to do Indonesian. Chris had a natural ear for languages and did well at Indo, so it was a different story from him. When he mimicked Indo Jack’s East European-sounding accent, he did it with respect.
   I’d seen Indo Jack a few times around the senior school. He was an unusual man to look at. He wasn’t particularly tall, but held himself with military straightness. The military theme carried over into the clothes he wore – khaki trousers, sandy or beige shirts (short-sleeved in summer, long-sleeved in winter) and shin-high black boots. He had pale olive skin, a large, curved nose and short grey hair combed straight back, but which stuck up, giving him a slightly shocked look. He wore thick black-framed glasses and it wasn’t until you got up close that you realised only one of his eyes moved. The other one was glass. To a bunch of 13 year olds from the sheltered eastern suburbs of Melbourne, he was intimidating, which I’m sure was his intention.
   There were plenty of rumours going around about Indo Jack. That he spoke 13 languages. That he’d been born on a ship as it crossed the dateline, so actually had no nationality. That he’d fought in the French Foreign Legion, where he’d got his glass eye. That his real name was Vladimir Soloduhin and he’d changed it to John Collins when he came to Australia because it sounded like the quintessential Australian name.
   So there I was at the start of year 9 sitting in my first Indonesian class with about 25 other kids. It was February 1973. We got straight into it that first day, learning the numbers. Indo Jack wrote on the blackboard in a perfectly formed rounded script, going through the numbers up to 100 – nol, satu, dua, tiga ... – while we wrote and recited. We did the ‘teens’ and the ‘–ties’ and when the bell went he gave us our homework: “Tomorrow, boys, you must know the numbers to ten thousand.” Looking back now, it actually wasn’t that hard – it was really only about 20 different words – but at the time it had the intended effect on us: shock and awe.
   That pretty much set the scene. Indo Jack worked us hard, set high standards and wasn’t happy when they weren’t met. He also left us in no doubt about his teaching style: his favourite phrase as he looked at us sternly from the front of the room was “Boys, I’m not here to be your friend.” Just in case there had been any doubt.
   The dropout rate was pretty high, as you can imagine. If you didn’t keep up with the long lists of vocab to be learnt, or your pronunciation was a bit off, you felt the ire of Indo Jack like a rabbit caught in a spotlight. Luckily, I found I had a good ear for the language, and with a mixture of work, bluff and good humour, managed to hang on through those tough first two years. But there were lots who decided that Indo wasn’t for them and made a quick exit to Accounting or Politics.
   By the time we started year 11, getting towards the pointy end of things, there was a hard core of about 10 of us still doing Indo. Indo Jack had successfully completed ‘phase 1’: culling the herd. That’s when Indonesian classes took an abrupt turn for the better. Indo Jack relaxed. He’d come into class “smoking” a ballpoint pen and make a point of tapping the “ash” off it. “If you must smoke, I recommend these, boys,” he’d say, as he sat down and put his feet up on the desk, a twinkle in his good eye. “They’re very mild.”
   He taught us the parts of the body by drawing large anatomically complete figures of a man and a woman on the blackboard, with the ease of a artist. We learnt zakar (dick) and kepala (head) and naturally put them together as a term of friendly abuse. We learnt that susu meant both breast and milk. Straying a bit off the topic, we also learnt that the term for brothel – rumah kupu-kupu malam – literally meant “house of the night butterfly”. Even sex-obsessed 15-year-old boys could find a bit of poetry in that.
   We had a reader called Di Kampung about the daily life of two brothers, Ali and Amat, in their rural village in Java, which I still own to this day (the book, not the village). Looking back on it now, it is a delightful account of traditional life in the rural desa pre-war. But for that group of 15-year-olds, it wasn’t exactly riveting stuff. One day, in a break from reading, Indo Jack looked at us and asked, “Do you enjoy these stories, boys?” I guess our lack of interest was apparent. “You know,” he said, “My adult night class students, they love these stories. But you, you would prefer pornography, wouldn’t you?” We sat there a little stunned. “And I would give you pornography if I could, to help you learn. But, unfortunately,” he shrugged, “I can’t.” Thinking about it now, it sounds a little weird, but all he was really saying was that he understood the importance of motivation.
   Sometimes during a lesson, as we’d be reading a piece in Indonesian or practising our conversation, there’d be a noise outside – some kids mucking around out in the corridor. Indo Jack would hold up a hand to interrupt the reader. “Excuse me just one moment, boys,” he’d say with an apologetic tilt of the head. He’d make his way across the room, poke his head out the door and thunder, “Will you bastards kindly shut up!”. Then he’d close the door and walk back to his desk. “I’m sorry boys,” he’d say, “Please continue, Mr Dobney.” We felt like kings. Or princes at least.
   Once we went to see an Indonesian film at a cinema in Richmond. The class went by bus, but Indo Jack travelled separately. He joined us at the cinema with a twinkle in his eye and an attractive blond woman on his arm. He introduced her to us as Gigi. No further explanation was felt to be necessary. The film we saw was called Jauh Di Mata, which doesn’t really translate to anything sensible. It was a melodrama in the style of many Asian films of the time, and some of its subtitles were wonderfully bad. As the heroine lay dying, the doctor pronounced, “Her heart is now fully rotten.” We loved it. And we were pretty impressed with Gigi too.
   We still worked hard – Indo Jack’s aim, he said, was to have us ready for our year 12 exams by the end of year 11 – but we felt like we were part of a small and privileged group, treated like young adults and able to enjoy testing our wits with this unusual, eccentric, intelligent man. In the lead-up to the exams, Indo Jack gave us one last tip. “I know the examiners, boys, and they are mostly Javanese, so they’ll be impressed if you can throw in the odd Arabic phrase,” so insh’allah and salem maeelaykum were added to our vocabulary.
   Indonesian was my best subject in the year 12 exams. I thought about doing it at Uni, but wasn’t really interested in an Arts degree, so ended up taking another tack entirely. It wasn’t until 7 years later that I got to Indonesia, at the start of the big o/s trip, and by then I was struggling to remember the basics. It’s a shame to say that I didn’t use the language for 25 years after that trip, but I don’t in the least feel like it was a waste of time. Being part of Indo Jack’s ‘lucky few’ was a bright light in the murky disconnectedness of teenage school life. And it did eventually lead to a Great Adventure, as you can read in my Sulawesi blog.