After the evacuation of international personnell from East Timor on the 7th of September, 1999 – I was one of the first UN staff to return.
I did a aerial survey of the communications sites around the island. This took two entire days sitting on the floor of an Australian Army Huey helicopter which stayed out of small arms range during the survey.
Later I installed VHF repeaters all over the country by road. The photo of the returning refugees was taken near Los Palos in late September. It is probably one of the first photos to be taken in East Timor after the return of international forces.
