Late last year Danny Piatscheck wanted a change of lifestyle. So, a few months after the Free Aceh Movement (Gam) agreed to end its 29-year separatist struggle in a deal with the Indonesian government, this Australian, his Indonesian wife and a New Zealand friend leased a dilapidated coffee processing plant in the picturesque mountains of central Aceh.

Their aim is to help turn round the coffee industry, one of the mainstays of the north Sumatran province's once-thriving but now conflict-blighted economy. The December 2004 tsunami destroyed 800km of coastline, left 170,000 dead and missing and half a million homeless, turning a dire situation into a catastrophe.