DILI : A C IT Y I N S E AR C H O F IT S S O U L – TAASA Review December 2010

Jill Jolliffe E ast Timor’s capital Dili has not been treated kindly by history.

Joseph Conrad in his novel Victory described it as that highly pestilential place', while Charles Darwin's colleague Alfred Russel Wallace, who visited in 1861, declared ita most miserable place compared with even the poorest of the Dutch towns’, by which he meant those of the Dutch East Indies.

Their views were influenced as much by enmity towards the Portuguese who governed it as from observing the city itself. Government Palace, Dili, originally the office of the Portugese colonial administration, with 1960s monument marking fourth centenary of the death of Henry the Navigator in foreground. All photos Jill Joliffe 2010 unless otherwise indicated Naturalist Henry Forbes followed in Wallace’s footsteps two decades later and looked at the city more in its own right...