“In their laughter, I found forgiveness”: on Andrew Atkinson’s journey home to himself

When the aircraft door opened onto the Dili tarmac, the heat struck like a memory.

Thirty-four degrees. Ninety-seven percent humidity. Dense air swirling with the unmistakable musty scent of the tropics.

For veteran Victoria Police officer and United Nations peacekeeper Andrew Atkinson, it was like stepping back into a life he’d long buried.

His last deployment to East Timor, now Timor-Leste, had ended in 2006. Fourteen months spent across two tours in a country torn apart by oppression, militia violence, and the painful birth of independence. Fourteen months that had left him with scars; some visible, some only he could feel.

He had promised himself he would never return.

And yet, in the October of 2025, he did.

Not as a peacekeeper, or as a soldier; but as a man searching for peace.

A country that tried to kill him

Andrew’s history with Timor was complicated.

His first deployment in 2001 nearly cost him his life. He was stabbed and seriously wounded;  injuries that would follow him forever. The same tour delivered one of his most haunting memories: a pregnant woman dying in the back of his vehicle, her husband begging him to cut the baby out with his Leatherman tool. When she slipped away, her village erupted in fury.

They wanted blood; his.

The second deployment in 2006 was no kinder. Riots, rock fights and chaos; a population fractured; violence simmering on the brink of civil war.

“I left Timor with nothing but contempt,” he recalls.

So why return?

To reconcile with memories that had never loosened their grip.

Then and now

Andrew travelled with a group of military veterans, their journey pre-planned to retrace key moments in Timor’s history.

He braced himself for old wounds, but what he didn’t expect was change.

The capital, Dili, once dusty, broken and deeply scarred, now shone with new infrastructure: paved roads, modern shops, proper footpaths. A bustling city centre. A hotel complex at Timor Plaza that, as Andrew put it, “wouldn’t have looked out of place in Melbourne.”

On the rooftop, beer in hand, he looked out across the skyline and saw not a warzone, but a city rebuilding; proof his past wasn’t the only thing capable of healing.

Walking with history

Over several days, Andrew and his companions explored sites from both the World War II resistance and Timor’s more recent struggle for independence. They met survivors of the Santa Cruz massacre, where Indonesian soldiers killed more than 250 civilians in 1991: a tragedy broadcast to the world and instrumental in galvanising international support for independence.

They sat with men and women who had endured torture within Comarca Prison, where resistance fighters suffered at the hands of occupying forces. Many did not survive.

More than 250,000 Timorese citizens died during the twenty-four-year occupation.

“We heard stories no human should ever have to live through,” Andrew says.

And yet, the most remarkable theme was not trauma, but forgiveness.

Dinner with a President

One evening, the group visited the Presidential Palace; a grand white building with manicured gardens and ornate reception halls. Inside, they were welcomed by President José Ramos-Horta, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and national hero; but this was no stiff diplomatic affair.

Ramos-Horta explained how he had transformed the palace into a haven for children. Government-funded lunches on the lawns. A small zoo. Swimming pools built so the nation’s young, the ones growing up free, could play where once only dignitaries walked.

Then he told a story that left the group laughing: the time he and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão collected the visiting Sultan of Brunei from the airport in Ramos-Horta’s mini Moke. The Sultan’s security team was not amused.

It was joy, in a place Andrew remembered only as broken.

Balibo, Maliana, and memory

The group travelled to Balibo, where five Australian journalists were murdered by Indonesian forces in 1975. Veteran Timorese resistance fighters who were there guided them through what is now a small museum. It was sobering, emotional, and deeply confronting.

They spent the night in Balibo Fort, once home to 2RAR in 1999, now transformed into a boutique hotel overlooking sweeping valleys. High on the hill, the infinity pool seemed an almost surreal contrast to the memories embedded in the stones.

From there, they journeyed to Maliana, near the Indonesian border – an area notorious for incursions by militia death squads.

Here, they visited the spot where Corporal Stuart Jones of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment was killed in August 2000.

“You could feel the weight of it,” Andrew said.

Later, they visited a children’s orphanage and school supported by Australian charities. The children welcomed them with ceremony, dancing, food, joy. The group taught them the Nutbush. They laughed until their cheeks hurt.

Pain and beauty. Side by side.

A country that chose forgiveness

As the group returned to Dili, Andrew wandered streets he once patrolled under threat. Memories collided: the fear, the violence, the desperation. But the people he encountered now were warm, smiling, and kind. 

The survivors they met — resistance fighters, torture victims, witnesses to massacres — all spoke of forgiveness.

Even Xanana Gusmão, former political prisoner, now Prime Minister, said forgiveness was the only way forward.

“It completely changed my perspective,” Andrew says. “I realised the Timorese had chosen healing. And if they could, after everything they’d been through, then maybe I could too.”

The gutter moment

Late afternoon heat rising off the pavement, Andrew found himself sitting in a gutter surrounded by children. Their English was broken; their clothes worn; their possessions few. But they laughed; big, generous belly laughs that rolled through the street like music.

They hadn’t lived through war, inheriting only peace. 

“They were happy,” Andrew says. “Happy with so little.”

And in their joy, pure and unguarded, something inside him shifted.

“In their laughter, I found forgiveness.”

A journey home

Andrew returned to Australia changed.

Not because Timor-Leste erased his trauma; but because the country had witnessed it, made room for it, and returned it to him, softened.

A country that once tried to kill him became the place that helped him heal.

The people he once feared taught him the power of forgiveness.

Sixteen years ago, Andrew left Timor carrying anger, pain, and contempt.

This time, he left with something entirely different:

Peace.