Share the Road

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It's not unusual to be sitting in a restaurant in Dili with several Australian soldiers at other tables with their automatic Austrian-made rifles leaning against the bar or lying on the floor at their feet. The Australians are in Timor-Leste to help keep things calm.

They have several barracks around the country and occasionally they go on manuevers -- mostly to practice since, generally, things are pretty calm. Yesterday, as I was driving to a small town about an hour from Dili, the capital, I came up on a small convoy of armored personnel carriers. We wound up driving behind the convoy almost the entire way -- a very narrow road that zig-zags up the mountain and back down again.

Later that afternoon, speaking at the opening of a new media center for journalists, I joked: "and I'd like to thank the Australian military for today's escort. My passengers were especially pleased since I was forced to drive slowly and no one got car sick."