Yogyakarta & Central Java

The island of Java is the fifth largest in Indonesia after Kalimantan, Sumatra, West Irian and Sulawesi. Roughly the size of England, it supports a population of about eight million. Representing more than half of the nation’s total. A third of the inhabitants live the narrow, middle section of the provinces of Central Java, with it’s capital at Semarang, and the Special Region of Yogyakarta.

This is the home of the true Javanese, as opposed to the Sundanese who inhabit the western part of the island and have their own language and customs. Most people are engaged in agriculture and live away from the city centres. More than sixty percent of the land is used for intensive wet rice cultivation dry hillside farming and plantation corps, while a further twenty percent accounts for forested areas of mostly teak and pine. The landscape is one of great variety and natural beauty. Inland, smouldering volcanic peaks sweep upwards to height of more than 3000 metres, from where numerous river flow down through rich and fertile plaints of the sea. Only in the north east of Central Java and on Yogyakarta’s southern coast is the soil less productive. Here, arid and inhospitable limestone ranges are unsuitable for agriculture and consequently support relatively small populations.

The Economy

Although Indonesia is still basically an agricultural nation, the last twenty years have seen the development of a number of important industries, such as the production of cement and fertilizers, ship-building, electronics and motor assembly, textiles and pharmaceuticals. Apart from these, the country has a rich supply of natural resources, including oil and natural gas as well as large quantities of timber and marine products.

Indonesia today is one of the world’s leading producers of crude oil. Tourism, too, is beginning to emerge as an important economic factor, the number of foreign visitors to the country having increased by about fifty percent over the last five years.

The People

Indonesia has population of around 2.370.000 (sensus penduduk 2010), making it the fifth most populous country in the world after China, India, the United States and the Soviet Union. Well over half of this total live on the island of Java, too, can be found the nation’s commercial and administrative capital, the city of Jakarta, which supports about eight million residents.

Islam is the predominant religion, accounting for approximately 87% of the population. There are a number of largely Christian areas, notably Manado in northern Sulawesi, parts of the Moluccas and the eastern islands of the archipelagos, as well as the Batak region of north Sumatra. Exceptional is the island of Bali, which has retained a syncretic Hindu/Buddhist faith up to the present day. In isolated regions the remnants of early , pre-Hindu animistic cultures can still be found.

‘Unity in Diversity’ is the motto of the Republic of Indonesia. This is certainly appropriate for a nation consisting of more than three hundred ethnic groups, each with its own peculiar manners and customs, languages/dialect and style of dress. These diverse peoples are today bound together by a common language, Bahasa Indonesia, and share a common outlook and attitude towards life, which is clearly expressed in the doctrine of Panca Sila (the five principles), the foundation of the national ideology.

FOREWORD

A thousand years ago, as Viking hordes pillaged the shores of Europe, a powerful dynasty of Javanese kings was overseeing the construction of one of the world’s architectural wonders the giant Buddhist temple of Borobudur near Yogyakarta.

For centuries, the fable south eastern island lured pilgrims, traders, adventurers and fortune seekers, who returned to their homelands with tales of strange customs, fabulous beasts and boundless wealth.

Marco Polo, who passed through region at the end of the 13^th century reported that Java was “the biggest island in the world” and that the wealth contained the there was ‘ beyond all computation’ . While his estimations of the size of the island turned out to be incorrect, his second observation might not have been exaggeration.

Today, with modern methods of transport and communication, visitors to Indonesia can discover for themselves the wealth contained there in the forms of history, tradition, culture, adventure, as well as sheer natural beauty.

This blog offer the visitor a glimpse of just two of Indonesia’s 33 provinces : Central Java, an ancient land of towering volcanos and swift-flowing river, and Yogyakarta, the ‘Culture Garden of Java’ .