As we fly across the Java Sea into Solo, the crater of Mount Merapi looms through the clouds, a thin plume of ash warning of its volatility. Merapi's rumblings and the likely impact of an eruption was one of the stories some of us on the Journalism Centre’s 2006 fellowships had been covering from our desks in Australia a week ago. Now we were in the Ring of Fire.

Covering international news by phone from a desk can be a disheartening experience, but sadly one that has become all too familiar as newsrooms are downsized and improved telecommunications diminish the need for travel. Often, if journalists are able to get out and report, it can mean ‘parachuting’ into a country to cover a story with little firsthand experience of how the place works.

For two weeks I was one of eight Australian journalists who were able to see the sights and meet some of the people who are in the news in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Not long after touching down in Solo in central Java, we were sitting with our feet bare and hair covered at the Ngruki religious school co-founded by alleged Jemaah Islamiyah spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir.

In Jakarta, we met with the former president Abdurrahman Wahid, who spoke on subjects from terrorism and pornography to the World Cup. We also met with the defence minister, Juwono Sudarsono, for nearly an hour. He talked of Indonesia’s disappointment at the Papuan visa decision, and of his belief that corruption and poverty, not Islam, was the driving force behind terrorism.

In Yogyakarta our bus joined a convoy to accompany the immaculately coifed Sultan Hamengkubuwono X (also the region’s governor) for a tour of villages devastated by the earthquake only one month before.

Later in the week, on a rare day off, the bus climbed Mt Merapi to the last observation post, 4km from the crater, where a team of Indonesian scientists monitored volcanic activity. The vulcanologists showed us their concrete bunker where they said they could survive for five days if Merapi blew her top. The day after we visited, Merapi did blow and two vulcanologists died at another observation post on the other side of the crater. They were found inside their bunker; one in a drum of water.

These experiences reminded us why we do what we do and, hopefully, made us more able to report with authority on these people and places.

Sacha Payne is a senior journalist with SBS Radio News. She travelled to South-East Asia with the APJC’s Myer Foundation fellowship; details at www.apjc.org.au.