Louise Williams is a former foreign correspondent who was thrown into the world of expatriate living at the age of 24 when she was sent to Manila with The Sydney Morning Herald, an Australian newspaper. She also worked out of Bangkok before being sent to Indonesia in 1996.

Unlike many women at that time in Indonesia though, Louise's husband accompanied her to Jakarta, along with two small girls. She covered the May 1998 riots here and lost a friend as she covered East Timor.

She cannot talk about her family being evacuated without her in 1998 without weeping uncontrollably, but in January this year she returned to Jakarta for six weeks with a group of 25 Australian students, to show them the ropes and to encourage the next wave of young journalists coming to this country.

I was faced with such a booming expat community when we came in 1996.

We were worried if we would get places in schools and it was quite hard to get a house to rent. The deposit you had to pay to get into an international school was absolutely phenomenal, I can't remember the exact amount - but it was something like A$10,000 and most of that was non-refundable.

It was a seller's market. There was a perception that Indonesia was on this Asian economic projectory. There was a perception that the strongman was in charge, but that all started to unravel, really, pretty much as soon as we got here.

That year was the beginning of the rise of Megawati so there were small pockets of opposition. They were shocking at the time, some incidents - but of course nowhere near what was to occur.

A few things happened which were extraordinary - it was like living history. So when the economic crisis hit, there was obvious mass hysteria in the shops.

People were panic-buying and buying for economic advantage - it was like watching an economy literally melting down. It was really incredibly sad.

I remember the sky clearing up over Jakarta because so many factories closed and we got some blue sky.

I remember being in line in Hero with people with carts piled up to the roof.

There was an underlying simmering of unrest - and people, particularly the Chinese, because they had been the butt of much violence over the years anyway, people had a sense that there was something seriously amiss.

And the banks had a negative spread. They were paying customers more interest to take their money than they were charging for loans that had already gone out.

That was really the beginning of a lot expats going home. That was before '98. Partly because there was a lot of Korean money here - that was the second country after Thailand to go through the economic crises - so Korean companies withdrew, they pulled back.

And a lot of Asian investors fled. So people started to have a sense that things were very precarious here. It felt quite different.

And then of course that led into the beginning of all the student demonstrations and this relentless, exhausting round of demonstrations and sporadic offshoots of violence and crises in Kalimantan and Ambon. There were spot fires everywhere.

But despite all that, this was a great posting for people with young children. And it was great to be a working woman - because it was easy to get help at home.

I could work at home and I could have a babysitter and a cook and I could have a garden.

I had my job and I was with my children 24/7, unless I had to travel.

There were a lot of families here. It was considered quite a good post because you could afford a house and various domestic staff. I think that's a little different in Hong Kong and Singapore - a lot of the expats live in high-rise apartments and that's not as attractive.

But there were also plenty of young professionals. There were quite a few in public relations, in mining and accounting.

I think in most expat communities, it's mainly the guy who has the job and the wife and kids follow.

There were a lot of women who weren't working here but who were professionals at home. And I think that's one of the problems with expat communities - if you can't get a work visa for your partner. And many marriages break down.

In my case, I got the job and my husband had to get a job to come here. He was an industrial chemist for Coca-Cola.

I wasn't a typical expat. I was a foreign correspondent. I wouldn't have dreamed of living in a compound. My kids spoke Indonesian. Everybody in the house spoke Indonesian.

It was such an incredibly busy and important time. I was so, so busy. I loved it.

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