Big dreams: Authorities have high hopes for boosting tourism on the islands of Bangka and Belitung — shortened to Babel — although their marketing activities do not promote the natural beauty of the islands. JP/Duncan Graham
Viewed from above, Bangka appears to have suffered a severe case of smallpox. High-quality aerial photos resemble X-rays, revealing ugly scars and pallid grays instead of the once-lush greens.
For about 300 years Bangka, the island at the southern end of the Straits of Malacca, has been pillaged and raped. The first offenders were the Dutch.
Now, local and overseas companies and individuals are hosing, hacking and dredging the land for tin.
Hundreds of small ragged-edged ponds dot the island where miners have hunted for the ore, then left the gouged land to be flooded.
The landscape is lunar.
"There are 30 tin smelters on the island," said Santoso Prasetija, factory manager for the company Donna Kembara Jaya, "and that's far too many. Maybe we'll have to start producing palm oil."
Maybe not. Two years ago a land dispute on the island resulted in palm oil crops being torched. Bangka is not wet and fertile like Java.
But Prasetija has a point: He and his workforce were standing round a furnace with no ore to process. The smelter's capacity is 800 tons a month. It now produces only 200 tons.
There are many reasons for the drop. Easily accessible ore is getting harder to find. Deposits deeper than 10 meters are too costly to excavate. Prices are dropping, costs are rising.
Restrictions on mining and environmental concerns are other factors. Earlier this year the Indonesian government said it would cap production - then said that might not be necessary as demand was weak.
Like most primary producers, tin miners are price takers, not makers. The value of the metal - currently around Rp 150,000 (US$15) a kilogram - is set in London. Last year the price reached $25.
There are 1.3 million people in Bangka-Belitung, Indonesia's youngest province created in 2000 from the two large islands off the east coast of Sumatra. The government estimates that at least 10,000 make their living in the industry.
Not all workers are employed by the big companies. Small-scale illegal mining has long been a problem and difficult to eradicate despite penalties for tin smuggling equal to those for drug trafficking.
What happens when the tin runs out or becomes unviable is a serious question.
Indonesia is the world's second largest producer of tin after China. While there are believed to be reserves of 800,000 tons left on Bangka, the issue is accessibility.
"I'm optimistic about the future," said vice governor Syamsuddin Basari. "We are serious about rehabilitation and planting millions of trees. Our goal is that three trees should be planted by everyone on the island. I even do it myself. It's called *Bangka Goes Green'.
"We are trying to lift the quality of education in the province so students don't have to go elsewhere, and we're looking to tourism to create employment."
In an adjacent office, a two-finger typist pecked out a memo on an ancient typewriter. Power outages are frequent.
The potential is certainly there: fine beaches, uncrowded streets, reasonable roads and a pleasant capital in Pangkalpinang, a city of 200,000.
Bangka is famous as the reputed inspiration for the setting of Joseph Conrad's classic novel Lord Jim, and infamous as the site of the 1942 massacre of 22 Australian nurses by the Japanese.
Much work is required to meet the needs of the modern tourism industry. At the little airport, which cannot take international flights despite being within sniffing distance of Singapore and Malaysia, there's a giant billboard promoting 2010 as the year to visit Bangka-Belitung.
Unfortunately, the bureaucrats have truncated the province's name into "Babel", which has some unfortunate connotations as all Old Testament readers know.
To charm visitors, the sign features neither happy families frolicking on the beach, nor young couples stunned by the scenery, but five stern middle-aged public servants. All are men and two are in uniform.
They look more like a deportation squad than a welcome team. Malaysia, with its long-running and successful "Truly Asia" promotion has nothing to fear from the "Visit Babel" campaign.
Yet despite the enormous environmental damage Bangka could be a good destination for serious eco-tourism.
A consortium of smelter companies has set up a corporate social responsibility program. This is doing some impressive rehabilitation work, although on a small scale, in a project called Bangka Botanical Garden.
Heavy machinery has straightened the sides and flattened the floors of old mining pits, in which crops have been planted. Early attempts to grow rice failed, said farm manager Jerry Japri, but the companies have persevered and the plants seem to be flourishing.
Large stands of cattle feed grow in the pits, harvested to feed the 330 beef and dairy cows. The animal waste is used to build the poor soil fertility. The milk is pasteurized and given free to local schoolchildren to boost their health.
The ambition is to supply 20,000 children, although many aren't keen: Drinking fresh milk is not part of Indonesian culture.
"We are still experimenting to find what works and doesn't. This project has been running for three years and we're not making money," said manager Japri.
"We're trying the meet the challenges of rebuilding the land and making it productive. Seeds from crops that thrive will be given to local farmers.
"We want to build cattle numbers to 1,000 head, but some of the Friesian dairy cows are suffering from the heat."
The first rains for five months fell when The Jakarta Post was visiting.
Plump white ducks paddled around the flower-bordered ponds where laborers once sweated in the roasting heat so the world could buy tins of food. Manicured avenues of trees offered welcome shade.
As a showcase of what can be done in mine site reclamation, the Bangka Botanical Garden is a standout. But it's only scratching the surface of a huge task and no one seems to know how long the companies will continue support.
The government's plan to have every person plant three trees may have to be revised to 300.
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