ABSTRACT
In March 1963, it took three days for word of the eruption of Gunung Agung to filter through to the Straits Times in Singapore. Dominating the eastern end of Bali, Agung was the island’s largest volcano. An image of its almost perfectly symmetrical cone hovered in my mind as I reeled through pages of that newspaper on a microfilm reader in the Fisher Library at Sydney University in early 1994. The first reference to the eruption was in the form of a Reuters report for Wednesday 20 March, filed from Jakarta and based on information gleaned from ‘travellers reaching here’ (‘fleeing here’ might have been more accurate). One of those travellers happened to be the chief editor of National Geographic (Booth 1963). He reported that he had been driving through the Balinese countryside on the morning of the eruption, enjoying the tranquil scenery, when he became aware of a tapping sound on the roof of his car. He got out to find volcanic ash and cinders falling out of a darkening sky.
