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Articles Tagged with: Culture

UNESCO-Recognised Wayang Kulit Returns to Australia’s Cocos Islands After More Than 75 Years

Indonesian master puppeteer Sumardi will bring the UNESCO-inscribed tradition of Wayang, Indonesia’s traditional shadow puppet theatre, to Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands this October, reconnecting Australian communities with an art form once embedded in its cultural life.

Sumardi will perform as part of Christmas Island’s Territory Week celebrations in early October, ahead of his Cocos and mainland Australian tour with Australian cultural enterprise Cultural Infusion.

A tradition returns to Cocos

Cultural representatives from Cocos approached Cultural Infusion seeking an opportunity to reconnect the community with Wayang Kulit. For Cocos, the visit carries particular significance. According to local historical records, dalang Nek Ichang brought a collection of Wayang Kulit puppets from Java to Cocos in 1920. Around 65 puppets remain in the Pulu Cocos Museum.

More than 75 years later, Sumardi will bring Wayang Kulit back to the island.

Wayang Kulit performance
Master dalang Sumardi performs Wayang Kulit, the traditional Indonesian art of
shadow puppetry, using intricately crafted leather puppets, character voices and live
music.
Credit: Cultural Infusion

Sumardi with puppets
Master puppeteer Sumardi with traditional Indonesian Wayang puppets. Sumardi began studying the art form at age 11 and undertook nine years of training to become a master puppeteer.
Credit: Cultural Infusion

Wayang Kancil
Sumardi presents Wayang Kancil, an animal-puppet storytelling program introducing younger audiences to Indonesian puppetry and culture.
Credit: Cultural Infusion

Wayang Kulit behind the screen
Sumardi manipulates traditional Wayang Kulit puppets behind the illuminated screen, where audiences can see the techniques used to create the shadow performance. Credit: Cultural Infusion

Wayang as living cultural heritage

Born in Central Java, Sumardi undertook nine years of intensive training to become a dalang (master puppeteer). He has worked with Cultural Infusion since 2006.

Sumardi’s 50-minute Wayang Kulit performance uses intricately crafted leather puppets behind an illuminated screen, with Sumardi performing multiple characters and guiding audiences through stories drawn from traditions including the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Wayang was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008.

Cultural Infusion Founder and CEO Peter Mousaferiadis said the visit illustrates why cultural practices need opportunities to be experienced.

‘Cultural traditions live through the people who practise and share them. Sumardi carries knowledge developed across generations, and when audiences encounter Wayang through a master practitioner, they are engaging with much more than a performance.’

‘This is particularly powerful on Cocos, where Wayang Kulit forms part of the community’s own history. Creating opportunities for cultures to be seen, understood and valued helps protect cultural diversity and builds greater understanding between communities.’

Since 2002, Cultural Infusion has worked with specialised cultural educators to promote intercultural understanding through direct cultural experiences, reaching more than 400,000 students in 2025. Its broader work includes advocating internationally for the protection and promotion of cultural diversity, including through civil society engagement with UNESCO.

From the islands to mainland Australia

Sumardi will tour Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales throughout October and November, presenting Wayang Kulit alongside Wayang Kancil, a 40-minute animal-puppetry program designed for younger audiences.

On Cocos, the puppets have preserved the memory of Wayang Kulit for more than a century. This October, the cultural knowledge they represent will once again be shared as something living.

AIYA Blog

Separated by Seas, United by Coconut: The Story behind Lamington and Klepon

At first glance, lamington and klepon could easily be mistaken for desserts from the same culinary tradition. Both are small, both are sweet, and both are generously coated in white grated coconut. Yet one is a beloved Australian cake, while the other is a traditional Indonesian kue found in markets and homes across the archipelago. Their visual similarity is striking, especially considering the vast geographical and cultural distance between the two countries. This resemblance offers more than a curious food comparison. It opens a small but meaningful window into how shared ingredients and environments can shape food cultures in parallel, quietly reflecting the broader connections between Australia and Indonesia.

Lamington is widely regarded as one of Australia’s most iconic cakes. Originating in Queensland, it consists of squares of sponge cake dipped in chocolate icing and rolled in desiccated coconut. Some variations include a layer of jam or cream, but the defining feature remains its coconut-coated exterior. In this dessert, coconut is not the primary flavor but a practical and textural finish. It prevents the chocolate coating from becoming too sticky, adds a pleasant bite, and gives the cake its distinctive appearance. Lamington represents how European-style baking traditions adapted to local conditions, incorporating ingredients that were abundant in Australia’s tropical and subtropical regions.

Klepon, by contrast, belongs to Indonesia’s long-standing kue tradition. It is formed from glutinous rice dough, filled with liquid palm sugar, boiled, and then rolled in freshly grated coconut. When eaten, the chewy exterior gives way to a burst of melted sweetness inside. Here, coconut is essential rather than decorative. It balances the sweetness of the filling, adds texture, and prevents the sticky surface from clumping. Coconut is deeply embedded in Indonesian cooking, making klepon a natural expression of local ingredients and culinary habits.

The resemblance between lamington and klepon is not the result of direct influence, but of practical culinary logic. Coconut serves similar purposes in both desserts: it reduces stickiness, improves texture, helps retain moisture, and makes the sweets easier to handle. Both are also bite-sized treats often served at gatherings, celebrations, or as everyday snacks. They evoke familiarity and nostalgia, commonly found in bakeries, markets, and home kitchens. Despite their different ingredients, their shared coconut coating gives them an almost twin-like appearance.

Geography and history help explain this convergence. Australia’s lamington developed within colonial kitchens shaped by European baking techniques, while klepon emerged from indigenous rice-based culinary traditions in Southeast Asia. Over time, trade routes and colonial networks facilitated the movement of ingredients such as sugar and coconut across regions. However, each culture incorporated these ingredients according to its own culinary framework. The result is two distinct desserts that reflect different histories yet respond to similar environmental conditions and available resources.

In a broader sense, the visual similarity between lamington and klepon serves as a gentle reminder of the shared environmental and cultural threads linking Australia and Indonesia. While their food traditions remain distinct, common ingredients like coconut reveal how geography can shape culinary creativity in comparable ways. Through these two desserts, we see how separate kitchens, guided by different histories, can arrive at surprisingly similar expressions of sweetness.

Article written by Benetta Swasti

Translated by Ezy Wiranda

AIYA Blog

Dipisahkan Lautan, Disatukan Kelapa: Kisah di Balik Lamington dan Klepon

Sekilas, lamington dan klepon mudah disangka sebagai hidangan penutup dari tradisi kuliner yang sama. Keduanya berukuran kecil, manis, dan dilapisi dengan kelapa parut yang melimpah. Namun, yang satu adalah kue khas Australia yang sangat digemari, sementara yang lainnya adalah kue tradisional Indonesia yang dapat ditemukan di pasar dan di rumah-rumah di seluruh kepulauan. Kemiripan visual keduanya sangat mencolok, terutama jika mempertimbangkan jarak geografis dan perbedaan budaya yang begitu luas antara kedua negara. Kemiripan ini tidak hanya menawarkan sekadar perbandingan makanan yang
menarik. Hal ini membuka jendela kecil, tetapi bermakna tentang bagaimana bahan dan lingkungan yang serupa dapat membentuk budaya kuliner yang mirip, secara diam-diam mencerminkan hubungan yang lebih luas antara Australia dan Indonesia.

Lamington secara luas dianggap sebagai salah satu kue khas Australia. Berasal dari Queensland, kue ini terdiri dari potongan kue bolu yang dicelupkan ke dalam lapisan cokelat dan digulingkan dalam kelapa parut kering. Beberapa variasi menambahkan lapisan selai atau krim, tetapi ciri khasnya tetaplah lapisan kelapa di bagian luarnya. Dalam hidangan penutup ini, kelapa bukanlah rasa utama, melainkan sentuhan praktis dan tekstural. Kelapa mencegah lapisan cokelat menjadi terlalu lengket, menambahkan tekstur renyah saat digigit, serta memberikan tampilan yang khas pada kue. Lamington menunjukkan bagaimana tradisi pembuatan kue ala Eropa beradaptasi dengan kondisi lokal dengan memanfaatkan bahan-
bahan yang melimpah di wilayah tropis dan subtropis Australia.

Sebaliknya, klepon merupakan bagian dari tradisi kue Indonesia yang sudah lama ada. Kue ini dibuat dari adonan tepung beras ketan yang diisi dengan gula merah cair, direbus, lalu digulingkan dalam kelapa parut segar. Saat dimakan, bagian luarnya yang kenyal akan pecah dan mengeluarkan lelehan manis di dalamnya. Dalam klepon, kelapa merupakan elemen penting, bukan sekadar hiasan. Kelapa menyeimbangkan rasa manis isian, menambah tekstur, serta mencegah permukaan yang lengket saling menempel. Kelapa sangat melekat dalam masakan Indonesia, menjadikan klepon sebagai ekspresi alami dari bahan-bahan lokal dan kebiasaan kuliner setempat.

Kemiripan antara lamington dan klepon bukanlah hasil pengaruh langsung, melainkan logika kuliner yang praktis. Kelapa memiliki fungsi serupa pada kedua hidangan ini: mengurangi kelengketan, memperbaiki tekstur, membantu mempertahankan kelembapan, dan memudahkan saat disajikan atau dipegang. Keduanya juga merupakan kudapan yang sering disajikan di pertemuan, perayaan, atau sebagai kudapan sehari-hari. Keduanya membangkitkan rasa akrab dan nostalgia, umumnya dapat ditemukan di toko roti, pasar, maupun dapur rumah. Terlepas dari bahan-bahannya yang berbeda, lapisan kelapa yang sama
membuat keduanya tampak hampir seperti kembar. Faktor geografis dan sejarah membantu menjelaskan kesamaan yang tidak disengaja ini. Lamington berkembang di dapur kolonial Australia yang dipengaruhi teknik pembuatan kue Eropa, sementara klepon lahir dari tradisi kuliner berbasis beras di Asia Tenggara.

Seiring waktu, jalur perdagangan dan jaringan kolonial memfasilitasi pergerakan bahan-bahan seperti gula dan kelapa antarwilayah. Namun, setiap budaya mengolah bahan tersebut sesuai dengan kerangka kuliner masing-masing. Hasilnya adalah dua hidangan penutup yang berbeda, mencerminkan sejarah yang berlainan, tetapi sama-sama merespons kondisi lingkungan dan ketersediaan bahan yang serupa.

Dalam makna yang lebih luas, kemiripan visual antara lamington dan klepon berfungsi sebagai pengingat akan benang merah lingkungan dan budaya yang menghubungkan Australia dan Indonesia. Meskipun tradisi kuliner keduanya tetap berbeda, bahan-bahan umum seperti kelapa menunjukkan bagaimana geografi dapat membentuk kreativitas kuliner dengan cara yang sama. Melalui dua makanan penutup ini, kita melihat bagaimana dapur yang berbeda, dipandu oleh sejarah yang berbeda, dapat menghasilkan ekspresi rasa manis yang sangat mirip.

Ditulis oleh Benetta Swasti

Diterjemahkan oleh Ezy Wiranda

AIYA Blog

From affixes to idioms and loanwords: a linguistic view on the benefits of learning Bahasa Indonesia for your career

Written by Lotte Troost – AIYA National Blog Editor

Translated by Gabriela Pasya – AIYA National Translation Team. Click here to read the Indonesian translation.

Design by Dinda Rialita – AIYA National Graphic Designer

“Cutting Asian language courses at Australian universities hurting students’ job prospects, experts say,” captures the title of an April 2021 article by The Guardian. The article confronts us with the news that now fewer people are studying the Indonesian language in Australia than 50 years ago. In 2021, only three major national universities in Australia have offered courses in the lingua franca of their closest and largest neighbour, as universities cope with the ongoing economic impact of the pandemic.

Only looking at Indonesia’s population size, counting over 271 million people, one could say that universities would do good to continue offering students the opportunity to enrol in Indonesian language programs. And if you count both native and non-native speakers, the Indonesian language – locally known as Bahasa Indonesia – ranks among the top-11 of the most-spoken languages in the world. Mastering Bahasa Indonesia thus opens doors to communicate with millions of people, to conduct business in a fast-growing economy (pre-covid) or learn about the country’s many rich local cultures. Quite some articles about the advantages of learning Bahasa Indonesia in terms of economic cooperation or cultural immersion are available either.

Learning Bahasa Indonesia not only allows you to communicate and enhance people-to-people or business connections, but it also compels you to dive deeper into the architecture of this dynamic language itself and reflect on it. The Indonesian language is rich in metaphors and idioms, and the meaning of words changes depending on affixes. It also contains many loan words from other languages.

As a non-native speaker who has been studying Bahasa Indonesia for several years now, the factors mentioned above have helped me expand my vocabulary in other languages and learn how to break down and analyze grammar and parts of speech. Learning Bahasa Indonesia eventually allowed me to analyse the language, looking at syntax and semantics as well as words and sounds. And analytical insight is a skill that is both useful in everyday life and highly valued by employers.

Loanwords

The Indonesian language as we know it today has its origins in Old Malay, an Austronesian language, and was given the name ‘Bahasa Indonesia’ in 1928 in order to unite the country. In 1945, it was confirmed as the official national language. Besides, the Indonesian language has borrowed and subsequently absorbed words from other languages such as Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Latin, Portuguese, and Dutch, and local languages such as Javanese and Sundanese. Different periods in Indonesian history, such as the Srivijaya period, the arrival of Islam, Portuguese traders and Dutch colonisation coincided with a developing and dynamic linguistic history, resulting in the following examples:

Bahaya (danger) is derived from the Sanskrit bhaya (fear), and belanja (shopping) is derived from the Pali velañja (that which is spent). Curi (steal) has its origin in the Hindi word corī (steal), and topi (hat) comes from the Tamil word toppi (cap).

Kabar (news) is derived from the Arabic khabar (news), and bakmie (meat noodle) is derived from the Chinese bah-mī (meat noodle). Some words are also derived from Portugese, such as sepatu (sapato, shoe), palsu (falso, false), and bendera (bandeira, flag).

A visual representation of the many factors that make the Indonesian language so dynamic and interesting. Source: alphaomegatranslations.com

Bistik (beefsteak) originates from the Dutch word biefstuk, and pidato (speech) is derived from the Latin pedātō and indirectly from the Sanskrit word padārtha (meaning of a word). Many words are also derived from English, such as bisnis (business), target (target), and stroberi (strawberry).

Nowadays, Bahasa Indonesia is still a dynamic and evolving language, with most words now being absorbed from English and local languages. According to Jakarta’s governor Anies Baswedan, Bahasa Indonesia consisted of 23.000 words in 1953 and expanded to 91.000 words in 2015. It is expected that this number continues to grow. With a solid background in Bahasa Indonesia, many other languages, or at least a part, can thus be mastered.

Affixes

Apart from loanwords, learning Bahasa Indonesia will also enhance soft skills such as creativity due to its affixes. With only one root word, it is possible to create at least eight new words by adding affixes.

For example, the root word jalan (street) can have various prefixes (at the beginning), suffixes (at the end) or circumfixes (at the beginning and at the end), creating various meanings such as berjalan (walking), menjalankan (to do, to make something happening), jalanan (road), pelajan (pedestrian) menjalani (going through time or circumstances), perjalanan (journey), sejalanan (in line), kesejalanan (congruence).

Often during my Indonesian language class, my lecturer challenged me to create as many words as possible using only one root word, which felt like I was decorating a plain pie (called the root word) with numerous candles and sweets (called the affixes) to make it complete. Such word games undoubtedly boosted my creativity and problem-solving abilities.

Metaphors and idioms

Language and culture are inextricably linked, and this is perhaps most visible through metaphors and idioms. In addition to expressing sentiments without explicitly saying so, metaphors and idioms provide cultural insights into a society’s principles and beliefs. And you’re lucky, because idioms and metaphors prevail in great numbers in the Indonesian language. Have a look at the following examples:

Polisi tidur literally translates as ‘sleeping police’, but it refers to ‘speed bumps’. Rather than living police officers who slow you down when you drive too fast, these static (sleeping) road bumps will keep you from exceeding speed limits.

Hangat-hangat tai ayam translates as ‘warm like chicken poo’ and refers to people who are only excited at first but quickly lose interest, like chicken poop that is only warm at first and quickly cools down.

Cuci mata does not literally mean ‘to wash your eyes’ but rather implies that you refresh yourself by looking at things you like, such as in window shopping. The verb cuci (to wash) is used because it is believed that this act will refresh and awaken you.

Buaya darat translates as ‘land crocodile’. Crocodiles are predators that lurk around in secret, looking for fresh prey to devour. A playboy or womaniser is referred to as a buaya darat in a similar context.

Source: www.liputan6.com

Bahasa Indonesia language proficiency is an important skill in itself. But due to its dynamic, linguistically fascinating, and ever-developing character, learning the Indonesian language will indirectly yield skills such as creativity, analytical insight and problem-solving capacity, which you can take benefit from in your personal and professional life. It takes, of course, many hours of theory and language practice to enjoy its indirect benefits. So let’s hope that learning Bahasa Indonesia will continue to be possible at the universities.

UNESCO-Recognised Wayang Kulit Returns to Australia’s Cocos Islands After More Than 75 Years

Separated by Seas, United by Coconut: The Story behind Lamington and Klepon

Dipisahkan Lautan, Disatukan Kelapa: Kisah di Balik Lamington dan Klepon

From affixes to idioms and loanwords: a linguistic view on the benefits of learning Bahasa Indonesia for your career

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