In my family, the thought of Timor always lingered in the air.

At birthday dinners, or Easter or Christmas with the cousins (like all Timorese, cousins is an imprecise term), we would talk about the football or our jobs or studies.

But the night would always turn to Timor, usually just as the coffee was brought out (who drinks coffee at midnight?).

Timor. For me, it was just an idea, really. Something that told me about my family, about why I might be how I am, and how I came to be here. For my Timor-born parents, uncles and aunts, there were real memories before they fled in the 1970s.

My grandparents have vivid memories of the war in 1975, but also when Australian commandos entered Timor to fend off the Japanese in 1942. I realise now these conversations were as close as they could get to their homeland during the long years of Indonesian occupation.

Elizabete Gomes (second from right) with some Timorese in Melbourne to vote for independence in the 1999 referendum. Photograph: Elizabete Gomes

Things changed 20 years ago. The Timorese filed into polling booths, despite the threat of violence, and demanded their independence. Outside the country, the diaspora community was overjoyed at the result, and then felt helpless and horrified at the violence that followed.

This week, the conversation in diaspora families like mine turned again to Timor.

30 August 1999

In 1999, there were 451,792 people registered to vote in the UN-sponsored ballot. That included 13,279 in Australia, Indonesia, Portugal and the United States.

US knew Indonesia intended to stop East Timorese independence 'through terror and violence' Read more

Days before 30 August, my mum’s brother, Gui, flew from his apartment in Paris to Lisbon to vote. In 1975, he had fled with his aunt Elisa and my mother on a Norwegian cargo ship, the Lloyd Bakke, as the civil war that gave way to a full-scale Indonesian invasion intensified.

“I was living in Paris when President Habibie announced that there would be a referendum for the Timorese,” Gui says. “It seemed too good to be true. I remember being in such a feverish state, excited by the prospect … but not 100% sure the result would be in favour of independence.”

Play Video 4:13 East Timor independence: a short history of a long and brutal struggle – video

Dad’s family voted in Dandenong, in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs. They arrived in the afternoon and the line was long.

My aunt Carmelita says she’d never been so happy to be standing in such a long queue, “because every one of us was there for the same reason”.

For two decades, a dedicated group of Timorese and Australian activists had sought to keep the Timor issue alive in the minds of people in this country.

They staged sit-ins at the Indonesian consulate in Melbourne; Carmelita and her elder sister Elizabete were arrested. They went to Canberra to pester anyone who would listen. My grandfathers were among those who held meetings in living rooms across Melbourne, working on new ways to raise awareness and money to send to Timor.

Carmelita Gomes holds a pro-independence sign at a polling booth in Melbourne in 1999. Photograph: Elizabete Gomes

Most held ordinary jobs across Melbourne. At night and on weekends, they were the overseas arm of a resistance movement.

Dad’s family left Timor for Mozambique in 1972 when my grandfather Amandio’s opposition to the Portuguese dictatorship had him fall foul of local authorities. Mum’s dad, Abilio, fled Timor for Darwin in 1975 on a hijacked Australian air force plane after the sudden departure of the Portuguese led to civil war.

My mother recalls going to vote by herself. “Timor was always there at the back of my mind,” she says. “Those emotions: sadness, gratitude, anger.

“It was like, finally, get them out of there. Not the Indonesian people, but the government.”

Mum did not become an Australian citizen until recently. At 32, she cast her first vote at a polling booth for the independence of her country.

4 September 1999

When the then UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, shared the outcome with the world, my uncle Gui, back in Paris, called my uncle Danilo, who was at work in Sorrento, a beachside holiday town south of Melbourne.

“I could hear the tremble in his voice, it was cracking,” Danilo recalls. “And he said, ‘We did it.’ And I just remember crying. I just cried and cried. There was nothing to say.

“It was a culmination and an axis point of all of the feelings, for a long long time.”

'Infuriated' Alexander Downer tried to get US officials to mask Australian inaction on East Timor Read more

My grandfather Abilio became a tram driver when he came to Melbourne. He would put up pro-independence stickers in his tram car.

On 4 September 1999, he was in the cockpit when he learned that 78.5% of the votes had been cast for independence. “I stopped the tram,” he says. “I wanted get out completely and go celebrate. The result was tremendous.”

In Timor, there had been violence heading up to 30 August. It was nothing like what followed.

Throughout September and October, what was known as the the Scorched Earth Operation led to the destruction of about 80% of Timor’s infrastructure, while nearly 1,500 Timorese were killed and more than 250,000 were forced into the Indonesian territory of West Timor.

Quick guide East Timor's 1999 independence vote Show Hide Why did East Timor hold a referendum in 1999? The landmark vote in 1999, in which 78.5% of East Timorese chose independence from Indonesia, was the culmination of 24 years of occupation by Jakarta and, before that, hundreds of years of colonial rule by Portugal. Why did Portugal relinquish its far-flung colony? In April 1974 a leftwing coup in Lisbon led to Portugal setting its colonial outposts, including then Portuguese Timor, adrift. What happened once Portugal left? Local elections were held but a coalition between the two biggest parties ended in a short civil war. The biggest party, Fretilin, unilaterally declared independence on 28 November 1975. Indonesia, which was already carrying out secret attacks across the border from West Timor, invaded nine days later. Why were the East Timorese so opposed to Indonesian rule? Portugal’s colonial influence meant the population was culturally very different from the rest of Indonesia. The vast majority of East Timorese are devout Catholics and speak their own language (Tetun). What happened after the invasion? The world largely looked the other way and some 200,000 people died over the next 24 years of Indonesian occupation. In July 1976 Indonesia’s parliament declared East Timor the country’s 27th province. What happened to the Timorese resistance? The armed resistance was decimated and, in 1992, its leader, Xanana Gusmão, was captured and imprisoned in Jakarta. Exiled leaders, like José Ramos-Horta, kept up the fight. In 1996 Ramos-Horta shared the Nobel peace prize with the head of the Catholic church in East Timor, Bishop Carlos Belo. But the brutal occupation continued. Why did Indonesia change its stance towards East Timor? In 1998 Indonesia's President Suharto, in power for 30 years, resigned amid the Asian financial crisis and massive pro-democracy protests in Jakarta. His successor, BJ Habibie, was more open to some form of autonomy for East Timor. In March 1999 he announced that if the East Timorese favoured independence over autonomy under Indonesia, he would grant it. What happened in the referendum and its aftermath? On 30 August 1999 the UN oversaw an historic ballot, in which 78.5% of East Timorese rejected autonomy in favour of independence. Indonesian-backed militia groups who had terrorised the population before the vote stepped up their attacks, aided by Indonesian security forces. A three-week campaign of violence killed 2,600 people, nearly 30,000 were displaced and as many as 250,000 were forcibly shipped over the border to Indonesian West Timor, in what amounted to a scorched-earth policy. How did the world respond? On 20 September 1999 an Australian-led international peacekeeping force, Interfet, arrived to restore order. Gusmão and other exiled leaders returned. Elections in 2002 saw him become newly named Timor Leste's first president

Carmelita was working at a restaurant in Halls Gap when an Australian peace-keeping force, and then a multinational force known as Interfet, were finally sent in to stop the bloodshed.

“All of a sudden people knew where Timor was,” she says. “They would say, ‘Aren’t you glad the Australians are there?’ And I would just go bright red. I thought, ‘It’s too late.’”

Gui says he lost total sense of time, watching the reports of protests in Lisbon where buildings were draped in black sheets. Danilo was so affected by the violence, he vowed to return to Timor to work. Months later he was in a Caribou plane flying into Dili. They let him sit in the cockpit as he saw the island come into view.

Since those days, most of my family has visited Timor. I haven’t. These conversations are as close as I have gotten.

I hope to visit with my grandparents – the true believers. After all the prayer vigils and rallies, Abilio says he never doubted. “I had a colleague [at the tram depot] who was Indonesian, who told me to give up,” he says.

“He said to me I could be a rich man if I supported Indonesia. I said to him, ‘My children will never call me a traitor.’ We have a saying, ‘“Deus escreve certo por linhas tortas.’”

Literally, it translates to “God writes straight on crooked lines”. A better translation is God works in mysterious ways.