Qualla: Kendari: The Bay That Built a City

Kendari: The Bay That Built a City: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Firstlab18, CC BY-SA 4.0. The name comes from a navigational tool. Kendari, the capital of Southeast Sulawesi, takes its identity from the kandai, a device that local fishermen once used to read the waters of the deep bay around which the city grew. When the Dutch explorer Vosmaer sailed into that bay on May 9, 1831, he found what navigators had known for centuries: a natural harbor so well sheltered that the Banda Sea's swells barely rippled its surface. That date became the city's official founding, though the Tolaki and Laiwoi kingdoms had called these shores home long before any European cartographer marked them on a map.

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Image: Firstlab18 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kendari: The Bay That Built a City: Three Strands of Rattan

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Firstlab18, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Tolaki people, who make up the largest indigenous group in and around Kendari, organize their world around the kalosara, a sacred symbol woven from three strands of rattan. Each strand represents one pillar of society: custom, religion, and governance, bound together to show ...

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Image: Firstlab18 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kendari: The Bay That Built a City: A Harbor Fought Over

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Salmiah La Suma, CC BY-SA 4.0. Kendari's bay made the city worth fighting for. After the Dutch ended their war against the Gowa Sultanate in 1905, they turned their attention to eastern Sulawesi's coast, and in 1908 Dutch troops besieged Puundombi Fort. The Konawe kingdom fell, and the Laiwoi moved their capit...

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Image: Salmiah La Suma | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kendari: The Bay That Built a City: Where the Catch Comes In

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Veronica Fish, CC BY-SA 4.0. Stand at the entrance of the Samudera Fishery Port and you can smell Kendari's economy before you see it. Twenty-seven fish processing companies operate here, making it one of the largest such centers in eastern Indonesia. The catch in 2018 ran to roughly 37,000 tons, dominated b...

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Image: Veronica Fish | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kendari: The Bay That Built a City: Bridging the Bay

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Siska Karina Adriatma, CC BY-SA 4.0. For decades, crossing Kendari Bay meant a half-hour drive around its perimeter, from the old town of Kota Lama in the north to the expanding districts of Poasia in the south. The Kendari Bay Bridge, completed in 2020, collapsed that journey to five minutes across 1.34 kilometers ...

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Image: Siska Karina Adriatma | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kendari: The Bay That Built a City: A Library Modeled on Harvard

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tropenmuseum, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2021, the seven-story Kendari Modern Library opened in Kadia District, a building the provincial government modeled after Harvard's library system. It houses a cinema room, meeting spaces, an area for local artifacts, and a cafe, all serving a city whose school participation r...

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Image: Tropenmuseum | CC BY-SA 3.0