A meeting of the United Nations Security Council’s Consular Commission at Batavia (now Jakarta), ...

A meeting of the United Nations Security Council’s Consular Commission at Batavia (now Jakarta), Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) with Dutch officials present. The Commission was set up to report to the Security Council on observance of a ceasefire between Dutch and Indonesian Republican forces, and consisted of the consular representatives in Batavia of Australia, Belgium, Republic of China, France, the UK and the USA.

Five of the consuls are seated down the righthand side of the table with only two identified - Mr Lee Gun Djin, the Consul for the Republic of China seated at the far end wearing glasses and to his immediate left is silver-haired Mr Walter Ambrose Foote, USA. The man with the pipe on the left foreground, facing the camera, is Group Captain Charles Eaton, the then Acting Australian Consul-General in Batavia. The man on the left at the centre of the table taking centre stage is RAAF Wing Commander Lou Spence, one of the first four Australian peacekeepers serving as military observers with the Commission. Two others, Commander Harry Chesterman, RAN; and Brigadier Lewis G H Dyke (with moustache), Australian Army are seated at the right rear of the photograph. The fourth Australian, Major David Campbell, is not in the photograph. The man seated on his own at the back right, between the wall maps, is possibly Colonel Victor Morizon of the French army and the senior French military observer attached to the Commission. The Indonesian man 6th from left is possibly Colonel Abdulkadir Widjojoatmodjo who was a member of the NEI administration at the time. The meeting took place sometime between 13 September 1947, when the Australian military observers first arrived and 11 October 1947 when Brigadier Dyke returned to Australia (Wing Commander Spence had already returned by then due to illness).