Arid land formerly doled out to the less favoured family members has come of age as the new property destination on the Bali Monopoly board.
Some have described it as a rolling plateau of dry scrubland, populated by a few skinny cows and goats nibbling the little grass there is to the nub, or a limestone quarry, deeply gouged, with a narrow road snaking along its lip.
Such images are far from the picture postcard Bali of stepped rice paddies and mossy stone temples, yet some are calling this arid, sparsely inhabited part of the island the next great real estate frontier.
The Bukit, literally hill in Indonesian, is the bulbous peninsula that hangs like an afterthought on the southern reaches of Bali. Despite being relatively inhospitable, the Bukit shows evidence of human habitation dating back to prehistoric times.The famous temple of Uluwatu has foundations dating back to the 11th Century, and has long been one of Bali’s most important Hindu places of worship.
According to I Gusti Gede Raka Antara, the head of Desa Adat Jimbaran (the Bukit’s idyllic, low lying seashore neighbour), both the Bukit and Jimbaran were governed remotely from the powerful kingdom of Klungkung in central Bali.
Largely uncultivated and covered in jungle, the Jimbaran/Bukit area was regarded as something of a frontier land (Jembar in Balinese means wide as in wide open space) until its dispersed communities were gathered into one administrative village unit known as a desa with its own temple, Ulun Suwi.
A system of barter existed between the inhabitants of the Bukit and Jimbaran, with the former trading wood and stone for salt and sea fish, an arrangement which cemented the link between the two areas via the system of Gotong Royong, whereby both tasks and resources beneficial to the community are shared.
What kept the Bukit’s population to a bare minimum was the simple lack of one key element: water. In Jimbaran, the water table lies at five or ten feet, whilst in the Bukit… let’s just say you need a big drill and a lot of patience, which meant that until very recently, the Bukit’s inhabitants had to carry all their water by hand from Jimbaran.
As for land ownership, 70% of the Bukit belonged to the King of the Pemecutan regency (a kingdom running all the way from the capital Denpasar to the Bukit), with many of the settlers having an informal right of occupancy. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that any serious buying and selling of land took place and of course this occurred off the back of the tourism boom.
Those with legal titles to land (which were often acquired from the King in exchange for services rendered) suddenly found a burgeoning market as developers foresaw the resort potential of the Bukit. The decision to situate one of Udayana university’s campuses in the area, together with the Nusa Dua resort development, suddenly made the far south a focal point for economic activity.
But then something happened in the eighties. A man by the name of Tommy Suharto, who just so happened to be the son of the New Order president who ruled Indonesia for 32 years, flew over the Bukit in a helicopter and decided it was ripe for development.
Within a very short period, he had acquired an Izin Lokasi, a sort of precursor to purchase or option on the land all the way from the Four Seasons at the Jimbaran end to the Nikko Hotel in Nusa Dua, effectively blocking off every section of cliff face and white beach in between. So it remained until the early 90’s, with the only development to speak off taking place in the Dreamland area, as Tommy Suharto embarked on his New Order fantasy of five star hotels, restaurants and even race courses which were never to materialise.
In 1992 however, an entrepreneur (now a prominent resident of the Bukit) sailed a boat round the rugged coastline. So struck was he by the area’s beauty that he made enquiries with a view to purchasing a few blocks of land. Whilst most other potential buyers had immediately given up when they learnt of Tommy Suharto’s hold on the area, this particular individual had a fairly thorough legal knowledge of Izin Lokasi.
It turned out that the Izin Lokasi had expired and that the Badan Pertanahan Nasional (Indonesia’s national land agency) would be acting illegally if it did not free up the relevant tracts of land. In this way, the Izin Lokasi was broken, leaving Tommy Suharto only with the land he’d bought outright, but still a significant proportion of the overall area.
“A lot of the land is still tied up, but there are pockets that can be developed,” says Michael Martin of Exotiq Real Estate which has significant interests in the Bukit. “The western side is pretty much in private hands and of course it’s all freehold,” he adds. For Martin, the Bukit represents the future of tourism development in Bali.
As he points out, the transformation of arable land into residential is a highly sensitive issue. For this reason, development northward along the western coast will reach saturation, at which point the attention will turn to the Bukit. “It’s obvious really – the Bukit is close to the airport, it has stunning ocean views and it’s actually very popular amongst Australasians who are used to these kind of rugged coastlines. It began with the hotels like the Four Seasons and RitzCarlton, the villas are following and next will be the accompanying restaurants, clubs and bars.”
Water remains an issue, with a single pipeline (running along Jalan Uluwatu adjacent to the bypass) serving the whole plateau. Many residents have water trucked in, while others create their own wells, an effort that does have its rewards “I know of one resident who had two independent analyses carried out on the water he’d extracted. It came out better than Perrier, effervescent and with a rich mineral content. You can drink his water straight from the taps,” says Martin.
Although the water issue will certainly have to be addressed and that infamous period of the 80’s still has its echoes, where residents in some areas like Dreamland, were forcibly evicted from their homes and are now, quite rightly, seeking redress in the form of compensation. While development seems inevitable, it does need to take in wider concerns like these if it is to reach the kind of plateau it is ultimately capable of.
A Note on Property Prices
That the Bukit is one of the hottest areas is reflected in real estate prices, which have shot up by 1/3 in the last 9 months alone – a single are easily fetches IDR 100 million. With a raft of developments underway or in the pipeline and even a new golf course in Dreamland, the Bukit’s future as a resort development seems assured. Big names such as The Marriot and Bvlgari have recognised its long term potential . Closer to the beach is the Nusa Dua Golf Resort complex managed by Novotel. ■
By Rufus Johnson, Photographs by Jonathan Perugia.
