Crossroads: My stories of Balibo

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On the 16^th of October 1975 five Australian newsmen were murdered by Indonesian forces in the village of Balibo in what was then Portuguese Timor. Crossroads is an account of this terrible incident and its impact on the family of the youngest of them, Tony Stewart, as experienced by his sister, Anne E Stewart. In a powerful series of poems and prose, this book touches on almost every aspect of the events surrounding the murders, from the appalling duplicity of the Australian Government’s response and its failure to communicate properly with the Stewart family to the devastating lifelong consequences for that family of the loss of its oldest child in such violent and public circumstances. Fifty years after his death, the anguish experienced by Tony’s parents and siblings is vividly presented by Anne E Stewart in a work that should matter to us all.

Poems rich in detail and heartbreaking in their close focus on a family suffering a uniquely awful loss, prose written by a superb storyteller, and through it all a strong feel for political truths as well as the intimate realities of grief and anger – Crossroads is a must read. I was moved and deeply disturbed by it.

Ross Gillett