This was published 12 years ago
Diplomat fell for Indonesia
Murray Clapham, 1939-2011
Few Australians have immersed themselves as deeply in Indonesia as Murray Clapham, who spent most of his adult life there as a diplomat-cum-intelligence officer, business adviser, spiritual guide, husband and father.
Clapham appears to have been the model for at least one fictional Australian secret intelligence service officer in the Jakarta of the 1960s, when he was posted there as a diplomat in the Australian embassy.
Besotted... after years as Jakarta's most eligible bachelor, Murray Clapham succumbed to Youriathy.
Clapham certainly looked the part and could have walked off the pages of the Christopher Koch novel The Year of Living Dangerously. ''He was a delightful, engaging man, famed for holding some of the best dinners and parties in the diplomatic corps,'' recalls the journalist Mike Carlton, who was the ABC's correspondent in Jakarta in 1967-70.
''There were always beautiful women around him. He spoke fluent Bahasa Indonesia but with an execrable accent. He was very well informed.''
It was a long way from Clapham's very traditional Australian background. He was born to a family running part of the merino sheep stud Uardry Station near Hay, NSW. Clapham's energy - reflected in mischief and cheek - ''soon eliminated all available options for schooling at home'', family members say, so he was sent to board at Melbourne Grammar's Grimwade House at an early age.
Clapham showed himself to be a natural leader and sportsman. He went on to study law at the University of Melbourne, but before graduating spent time in Jakarta in a volunteer aid scheme.
After joining the then department of external affairs, Clapham was quickly sent to the Jakarta embassy as a second secretary. He spent five years with the embassy, covering Sukarno's Konfrontasi campaign against Malaysia, the rapid rise of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), the murky coup attempt or provocation of September 30, 1965, and the army-student pressure that forced Sukarno to hand power to Suharto in 1966.
It was a dangerous time and Clapham went well beyond the normal role of a diplomat in contacting and encouraging the anti-communist student groups known as KAMI and KAPPI.
''He had excellent contacts with the student leaders from KAMI and KAPPI who ran the street demonstrations against Sukarno,'' Carlton remembers. ''Some of them, I think, had sheltered in his home during the 1965 coup, when the PKI were after them. This caused a minor panic at the embassy.''
Clapham quit the diplomatic service in 1968 and stayed in Jakarta, setting up an investment consultancy, Nasehat Indonesia, and working as a representative or director for resource companies.
Like various other Western diplomats, Clapham was drawn to the spiritual group Subud, founded by the Javanese teacher Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo. Through twice-weekly group exercises in which members gave free expression to impulses and emotions, it was believed adherents could connect to a higher self or the divine.
Early in 1979 a young Indonesian financial sector worker named Youriathy Osak, originally from Menado (North Sulawesi), came to Clapham's house in Jakarta to collect a workmate getting an English lesson from Clapham's Australian lodger. Clapham chatted with her while she waited. Within months, Jakarta's most eligible foreign bachelor had succumbed. Within the year, they were married.
In 1992 the family moved to Ecuador for a year, where Clapham helped establish a school in Quito called the Fundacion Educativa Pestalozzi, which was run along Montessori-style lines.
Throughout his life, Clapham was known for his openness and dedication to others. ''Murray created what we call today 'social networking' and he did it without the use of electronic aids,'' an old friend, business colleague and fellow Subud member, Mansur Geiger, noted.
A former Indonesian army general and commander of United Nations peacekeepers in the Sinai, Rais Abin, added in the Jakarta Post: ''It was his personal generosity in helping so many Indonesians - sometimes some he hardly knew - by giving concrete advice and opening up new opportunities that was truly impressive.''
Clapham is survived by Youriathy, their daughters, Malaika, Grace and Kartini, sister Ann Carlyon and half-brothers Geordie and Harold.
A memorial service will be held at St John's Church, Toorak, in Melbourne at 11am on May 20.
Hamish McDonald